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A LETTER 



TO A PRIEJ^D IN A SLATE STATE. 



BY A 



CITIZEN" OF PENNSYLVAmA. 



L n'aT\ts la ger^o 



PHILADELPHIA: 
JOIIX (CAMPBELL, BOOKSELLKK, 

419 Chestnut Stbee t. 

1862. 






£45 2 



77)f6'^ j;f/_^t'6' ZftrY' ■meant to he ijubJishnl wiiltoiii f/ic 
writer s ruwie, bat for )-easoris not itecessary to troubh the 
reader in't/i, it has heeti thoiu/ht yroyer to add it. 

CBABLUS INGEBSOLL. 

I'hiludelphid. March li4, 18lJ2. j 



LETTER TO A FRIEND IN A SLAVE STATE. 



My dear 

Everybody recollects the turn given to tlie idea 
that the fence of the law cannot be made perfect, when the 
Englishman said he never saw an Act of Parliament he 
could not drive his coach through ; now signalized, alas ! 
but a thousand years to soon, in the illustrious instance 
of the Constitution of the United States. Any one or more 
of the States which drove into this great work may drive 
out again by the Southern road, and wo are taught by les- 
sons, both Legislative and Executive, that as long as the 
States which remain to us are united, the Constitution is 
unwounded, though the Xorthera chariot and scythes be 
driven through every clause of it. What the South accom- 
plishes at a blow, we do piecemeal. Eight millions of 
people hold that, if a State had called a convention and 
asked of the Federal Government a boon, which was re- 
fused, or being refused nothing whatever, had expressed a 
preference to live alone, they might make their act of con- 
stitutional secession, and bow themselves out of the Union. 
Nor would it be possible to exaggerate the heresies of those 
that are leading the fortunes of the other eighteen millions, 
who assail, in his liberty and property, the plainest rights of 
the citizen ; who mean to consolidate the Government, if 
they can, and whose schemes for the consolidation of large 
parts of it, are already before Congress. These are the 
extremes of thought and action that accompany national 
calamity. 
1 



Ill any other part of the globe the next act would be an- 
archy, the edifice would come down and crush its inhabi- 
tants under the ruins of centuries ; but our house was built 
yesterday, with our own hands, and we can hold it up if we 
will. We must not deceive ourselves ; we must ac- 
cept, what is upon us, as revolution. If we conquer the 
South and take possession of their vanquished country, it is 
revolution ; to make peace and separate from them, for 
which there is no power in the Constitution, would be revo- 
lution, and that revolution is the name that applies to our 
existing condition, ever}- man's senses assure him. 

We are in the midst of civil war, to North and South alike 
unex^pectedly ; for when was civil war deliberated on ? The 
Korth did not believe the South would leave them ; the 
South did not believe the North would fight to retain them ; 
the South armed and struck the blow, and now the sword 
is drawn on both sides, and cannot be sheathed without 
conquest or a compromise. We have to conquer the South 
or settle with them ; and their unconditional conquest seems 
the policy of those that rule us. 

The purpose of this letter is to explain to you some of the 
views of the persons in this State who regard conciliation 
as our only available resort, and look upon the extreme 
course* of the Government as ruin. 

In such a crisis, the most perilous in 'which a nation can 
stand, of what materials is composed the party in possession 
of the Government, and which controls our destinies ? 
They may be classed under three heads. The original 
abolitionists who engage themselves, Avithout disguise or 
denial, in the work for which they where ordained, and 
which they have from the beginning, when they were but a 
speck on the remote horizon, steadily pursued, that of de- 
stroying the Constitution and Union ; the political aboli- 
tionists, or those who, for the sake of power and access to 
the treasury, have adopted their principles, and act with 
them ; and last, the body of the Republicans, who voted for 



Mr. Lincoln as the anti-Democratic candidate, and who, 
sincerely attached to both the Constitution and the Union, 
yet stand helplessly by, and allow the stakes of national ex- 
istence to be played by the abolitionists. 

If the President and his advisers were reliable men, 
though the philosophy of freedom teaches to distrust 
power, every citizen with the love of country in his breast, 
would be disposed, in a great emergency, to bestow on them 
a liberal confidence ; but when his want of force and their 
want of virtue are the vice of our position, instead of the 
call not to embarrass the Government, which- we hear from 
so many mouths when a measure of the administration is 
challenged, a watchful jealousy is the duty of all. 

Nothing but a restoration of the Union can save us. 
Peace and a separation cannotbe agreed on with the South ; 
the President and Senate having no power to make a treaty 
by which the Union is divided. It would have the effect 
of restoring the States, upon the instant,to the condition of 
independent sovereignty, in which they stood before they 
came under the Constitution of 1789. And the attempt 
which you may expect to see, some day, made by Mr. Lin- 
coln's government, to give etfect to the secession of at least 
part of the South, by letting them go, would be futile. The 
President and Senate may enter into treaties with foreign 
nations, but they cannot convert into foreign nations, 
States of the Union. What then is to become of us ? 

Mr. Seward has well said that we are not to break at what 
he calls a " line of latitude ;" meaning probably that the pre- 
sent line, between the two hostile sections of the country, 
or any other line, could never be a permanent demarca- 
tion of boundaries. When he stated his proposition, he 
struck a chord which vibrates to every heart, for the ques- 
tion directly folloM's, if we cannot divide by this line, and 
if the States cannot live isolated in their separate sovereign- 
ties, and it is plain they could not, what line is there to 



divide by ; and if, which is equally plain, there is none, 
where shall we be, and where find habitation for our liber- 
ties, when the Union is broken up ? When we came to- 
gether in 1790, we had never been separated ; we had not 
quarrelled ; yet the Union was effected with much difficulty, 
and not at the first intention ; though having all the advan- 
tage of the auspices of Washington and the other men of 
that day. 

If, by some process of disintegration, through political 
mishap, the territory of any people, for example, France — a 
very compact country, which has added to its square miles 
from century to century — could be divided by a " line of lat- 
itude," or separated into the many parts which originally 
composed it, so that those, which once were independent 
sovereignties, might live alone, and those which were 
wrested from Germany, Spain and England, renew 
their relations with them, it is plain that these disjointed 
members, if they did not come together again as France, 
would have altogether new combinations to form. Now in 
what particular would our condition, in case of final dis- 
union, w^hether divided into two parts or many, be better 
than theirs ? 

We have existence as an united country, by compact, a 
fairer and better than any other that could be devised, 
and which was for seventy-one years respected. If it be 
broken, not to be renewed, our condition is just as much 
worse than would be that of France, as the cohesion of the 
provinces of a country, accustomed to highly centralized 
rule, is greater than that of a system of States in a union 
or confederacy. "Where then, the force of arms and habit 
that united France, the force of compact that united us, 
being broken, would be found the new combinations that 
must settle their destinies ? The answer is, in. luar ! War 
gave to France, in about a thousand years of fighting and 
negotiating, their territory as we see it to-day. This pro- 
cess must be with them begun, for the second time, and 



with us, for the first. Every cause of strife, that makes war 
so frequent between the different powers of the earth, that 
it may be said to be always imminent, woukl be reason 
enough for hostilities among us ; and there would be ele- 
mental questions to settle besides. 

In Europe their map is made. Each country has its 
identity, any two or more of them may engage in conflict; 
but it would not be allowed to affect a question which has 
been settled for tliem, for centuries, and must not be touched, 
not only because it has long since been decided, but because 
it is the interest of other nations, of that part of the world, 
for the sake of the general peace to insist upon, and, if need 
be, enforce it. To alter the map of Europe by the annexa- 
tion of a part of Savoy to the French Empire, though by 
treaty between the nations concerned, backed with the con- 
sent of the population affected, as expressed by their votes 
at the polls, startled the Continent. 

But what map have we, when there is no longer the 
United States of America ? There is no identity for Penn- 
sylvania or any other State, when the Union is broken up. 
They are not nations, founded, fixed and established, but 
tilings of yesterday, whose relations with themselves and 
with surrounding territory, were based upon, and adjusted 
to the Union ; which being gone, there is no indentity left 
to be respected, and if there were, no power to enforce it. 
"War, therefore, would be with us a necessity of our situa- 
tion, and not as with other countries, an occasional fact, de- 
pending on accident, interest or passion. It would be our 
normal condition until we came to a settlement; and that 
could only be when we had mastered one another. Who- 
ever will look at our present map will perceive that the 
states are derided, for the most part, by surveyors' lines. 
Pennsylvania, which bounds on six States, Delaware, Mary- 
land, Virginia, Ohio, N"ew York, and Xew Jersey, is se- 
parated from five of them by the surveyor, and from one 
only by a natural boundary, so that, perchance, the farmer 



6 

in plowiiis? his field, does not know whether lie is plowing 
Pennsylvania or Virginia. Wlien we had tlie Union, this 
was cement to it ; but make ns no longer one, and it be- 
comes the source of bitter and incessant hostilities. 

"We must be broken and shaped into nations ; the process 
will be long, and nobody can anticipate its results. The 
strong will establish themselves behind rivers, chains of 
mountains, and lines of fortresses, and encroaching on the 
weak, annex, absorb and divide them into provinces, or rule 
and scourge them as colonies. States will recede or ad- 
vance — some will become great nations, others will disap- 
pear, and new ones will arise, as Poland has left the family 
of nations, and Holland and Prussia have come into it ; as 
France and Russia have advanced, and Austria and Swe- 
den receded. South Carolina, with her swamps and rice 
fields, will fall a prey to the more vigorous regions of 
the upper country of Georgia and Tennessee. Ohio, 
Virginia and Kentucky, which, on fheir fertile soils 
could maintain four hundred souls to the square mile, will 
be strong ; l^ew England, which could not support a third 
of that number, will be weak ; and so must be immense 
tracts of country in the South which are better adapted to 
the mosquito and crocodile than to the habitation of man. 
Physical force, measured by population, and the number of 
men they can bring into the field, will settle all mooted 
points, and neither South Carolina nor Massachusetts, which 
will have had so much hand in doing away with the old 
form of abitrament, would find reason to congratulate 
themselves on the new. 

In the midst of these discords, and it would be long be- 
fore the questions dividing the country were sufficiently set- 
tled to give hostilities any other character than that of civil 
war, liberty would be engulphed. We see now, in the first 
stage of our disturbances, the proneness of power to usur- 
pation and violence ; we witness audacities which, a year 
ago, would have boon pronoun(;ed impossible. Already the 



liberties of the citizen are a thing not jealously regarded ; 
and we are told that the Government must be sustained to- 
day, and the Constitution righted to-morrow. But for this 
fatal mistake of our rights, and of the duty we owe our 
country, and the yet more flagrant error that it is not in the 
power of events to do us permanent political injury, under 
the influence of which we made our first mis-step, and by 
which we seem to this day to be infatuated, we would not 
be where we are. 

That this is not only an unexaggerated, but the only view 
to be taken of our future, in the event of failure to restore 
the Union, and dividing at a "line of latitude," or in 
any other manner, we learn by lessons taught in the history 
of the world, on too many of its pages, to be doubted either 
by the exalted, like Mr. Seward, or the more humble, like 
you and me. We might swear to treaties and enter into 
well-schemed divisions of the country ; and they might last 
a few feverish years, but the sword must make our map 
at last. 

A word now — the question for the country being war or 
compromise — upon the war which we are at this time wag- 
ing, and the probabilities, as they strike people generally, of 
its success as a war of conquest. Let us suppose to ourselves 
all the advantages of an immense force. Let us grant we 
can keep it up to 700,000 men, and that is out of the 
question, for no free people will pay heavy taxes, which in 
the much burdened countries are imposed by one class, and 
paid by another, and not imposed by the people on them- 
selves. Let us also suppose, which is equally out of the ques- 
tion, that for any length of time we can safely tempt 
authority with the control of such a force. 

You and I would not venture to criticise campaigns, but 
there are things belonging to them, as plain to the common 
soldier as to the commander-in-chief. If we had declared war 
with England, or taken the chances of one, rather than pass 
under the Caudine forks and surrender Mason and Slidell, 



8 

the people might have praised the firmness of their rulers ; 
but if pursuing the bold train of his diplomatic thinking, 
when just before, Mr. Seward expressed himself to his 
representatives abroad, as ready to fight all Europe toge- 
ther, should^ they cross his path,* he had gone to war, 
not to save our honor, but with the object of conquering 
and keeping the British islands, we should, any of us, have 
been able to give good reasons against so extreme an 
undertaking. 

We must assume that the South will resist with all their 
might, and that our progress in their territory is to be ef- 
fected by force of arms. Not only has there been no evi- 
dence, but the contrary, by many Northern witnesses, of a 
desire to see a Northern army among them ; and whatever 
the Union feeling in the South, if kindly dealt with, it is 
against all reason and probability that a spirited and free peo- 
ple should invite to their conquest a government, however 
legitimate, which their immediate State,by organized action, 
and a majority of their people, has agreed to throw off. 
It is in the nature of men, especia]ly-fi'eemen,^to be regulated 
by the will of the majority, a human instinct on which repub- 
lican government is founded, which carried us through the 
Kevolution of '76, when a minority submitted their opinions, 
and which we see operate in the daily circumstances of life, 
where the leading few commonly infuse their ideas into and 



* See at page 200 of the volume of notes and despatches lately published 
by the Department of State — ^Ir. Seward's despatch to Mr. Dayton, 22nd of 
April, 1861: "Not entertaining the least apprehension of the departure from 
that course by his Majesty's Government, it is not ■without some reluctance 
that the President consents to the suggestion of soiie considerations affecting 
France herself, "which you may urge in support of it. * * * Foreign 
intervention would oblige us to treat those who should yield it as allies of the 
insurrectionary party, and to carry on the war against them as enemies. The 
case would not be relieved, but, on the contrary, would only be aggravated, if 
several European States should combine in that intervention. The President 
and the people of the United States deem the Union, which would then be at 
stake, worth all tlie cost and all the sacrifices of a contest with the world in 
arms, if such a contest should provp incvitnble." 



control the action of the many. We also assume tliat the 
troops of either side fight equally well, with the single differ- 
ence that the South has the advantage of us in contendino; 
in defence of their homes. As to the claim of superior skill 
on the part of Southern generals, it seems to be not only 
against probabilities, but disproved by facts. We furtlicr 
assume that we tight with, not on our part prodigiously 
superior numbers, for, though we are much the more 
numerous population, and able to pay more soldiers, yet, 
having to invade a widely extended territory, there is no 
reason whj- they should not be as strong as we are, at the 
point of conflict. 

If then the forces are of nearly equal numbers, and equally 
well led, how ought we to count the chances, the question 
being the conquest of the Southern States ? In Missouri, 
Kentucky and other states, where, divided in opinion, they 
resist the secession movement, Northern armies find a coun- 
try in which, no more being necessary than to give military 
aid to the well-afiected part of the population, conquest is 
not in question : but the vast region comprising Western 
Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Florida, Alabama, 
Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and 
Eastern Virginia, have to be brought to submission by the 
sword. I do not mean, by the sword, the sort of ruin like 
that of the iron pot coming against theearthen one — which 
must ensue to them at last, as co-terminous neighbors of a 
hostile people, stouter, stronger, riclier and more numerous 
than themselves — but military subjugation. To accomplish 
this, to invade, conquer and occupy, it is indispensable that 
our military movements have the positiveness and certainty 
of those of trained armies, led by experienced ofKcers, and 
supported by a vigorous government, supplying them with 
constant reinforcements. 

We begin, subject to the immense disadvantage of being 
without the necessary foundation on which to build ; for the 
handful of soldiers who composed the army .before these 
2 



10 

troubles came on us, canuot serve as a frame for a force of 
718,000 men. It is the best military opinion that the French 
revolution could not, for want of soldiers, have conquered 
its wa}', and must have broken down, notwithstanding the 
rush of the people into the ranks from all classes, had it not 
been for the remains of the old royal army, which the re- 
publicans used as the basis for their new military establish- 
ment. If, having an organized army of 359,000 disciplined 
men, we add to it 359,000 more, making up our number 
of 718,000, it is plain that the whole establishment would 
be alike in its parts when the recruits had had a few 
months of drill and discipline, every ten of them being 
alongside of ten soldiers, whose experience and know- 
ledge would instruct them and inspire them with confidence ; 
but if the whole 718,000 be equally raw and ignorant, 
they can be educated only by marching and fighting, and 
must for their primary instruction go through, in the 
field, a course of reverses and successes. We are now at the 
second stage of our education, that of successes, on a very 
long course of schooling that is before us. As to officers, 
beginning with almost none, which, considering our im- 
mense force, may be said to be the case, our condition 
must needs be much worse than in the department of 
soldiers. 

The invaded South might lose twenty battles and not be 
conquered, while the loss of one by the invading North, 
when their work was almost accoiaplished, might be fatal, 
and operations to be begun again from the beginning. 
In 1808, the finest troops in the world were in possession 
of a great part of Spain, when the battle of Baylen lost 
them every foot of it but that which was north of the river 
Ebro, and on the confines of their own country. 

Have we then an invading force ? one with which to con- 
quer, take and keep military possession ? War is a trade, 
and armies only a machine. Our soldiers are brave, but 
courage, as was said by one who must have known, is not 



11 

the first quality of a soldier. The question is, do they, taken 
together, make that machine so difficult to adjust, a dis- 
ciplined army — are they a force which can he carried to the 
field, and relied on to struggle with the realities of war — 
cold, hunger, fatigue and privation, the miseries of the 
roadside and the hospital, without becoming disorganized ; 
not mere]}', though that is not easy, w^hen engaged with the 
enemy, to advance with alacrity and retire in good order ? 

The events of the memorable day of Bull Run, answer this 

question. AVe may have some better soldiers than then we 

,had; men who have been under fire and done their duty 

well ; but the character of our force must be the same, new 

levies led by new officers. 

It would seem, taking the Southern accounts with onr own 
that from about 10 o'clock, when the engagement began, 
to between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, when it ended in a 
panic rout, we constantly gained ground and lost none, 
and finally took flight, simply and merely because we were 
not soldiers enough to make a retreat in the presence of 
the enemy, when owing to his being reinforced or from 
some other cause not perfectly agreed on, by both sides, a 
backward movement had become necessary. Armies have 
been seized with panic before the 21st of July, 1861- 
This has happened so often that we w^ere able to console 
ourselves, in our disgrace, with instances of it from 
all countries ; but the fact, for it was without necessity, 
and for no reason in the world than because we did not 
know how to retire, went to prove, and did prove, that onr 
soldiers were unsure. 

But if good troops everywhere have ])een sometimes 
panic-struck, good troops now^here ever acted sucli a part 
as did the Southern armj- when ours fled before it. Their 
enemy flying, in the last confusion, had scattered them- 
selves, and left, unprotected and uncovered, the capital of 
their country, distant thirty -four miles, one day's forced 
march : and that place, for a certain number of days, if not 



12 

weeks, they had only to enter and possess, if thoy had had 
troops with which, abandoning their position, and the 
forests and fastnesses under cover of wliich they fonglit, 
they could have ventured the simplest operation in the 
open field, without incurring the hazard, in their turn, of 
military disaster. But far from advancing on the place 
thus lying at their discretion, they did not, in any force, 
so much as pursue, and the foe was allowed, while they 
must have had under their hands a very large army, of 
which any 10,000 men capable of being moved, might have 
entered Washington, to collect again his disbanded forces, 
repair his losses, restore his condition, then lie for months 
opposite them, stronger than he was the day before the de- 
feat took place, and iinally to see them retire. 

Any general, they say, may gain a battle, for it may be 
given him by his adversary ; the true general is he that can 
reap the fruits of success; but no want of generalship 
would explain this most remarkable forbearance, which 
could be accounted for by nothing but the want of solidity 
of their soldiers. All kinds of reasons have been suggested 
for it: a defensive policj', bad weather, imperfect informa- 
tion, ignorance of the extent of their success, that they did 
not want the seat of government of the United States, with 
others equally unsatisfactor3^ If they were all founded in 
truth, and were combined together, it is not imaginable that 
that army Avould not have been in Washington, if they could 
have been taken there. When General lioss seized Wash- 
ington, he did not hold it forty-eight hours ; but the politi- 
cal as well as the military effect of its fall was immense. 
When Wellington, the most cautious of commanders, and 
not a man to give the substance for the shadow, had the 
choice, after his victory of Salamanca, to pursue, with the 
hope of destroying the enemy, or take, and immediately 
abandon Madrid, at the hazard of being overwhelmed by 
three armies, then in the field against him, he marched on 
the capital, altln^ugh he knew he could not remain there, 



13 

and, iu fact, came within aa ace of being cut off, in retiring 
from it. 

The capture of Washington, beside its prodigious mili- 
tary results, would have had such an echo everywhere, 
both here and in Europe, where it would have been worth 
to them, probably, the recognition they so much covet, 
that, granting no more than rationality to the Southern 
leaders, its remaining in our hands after the day at Bull 
Eun, can be accounted for in one way only. It is altogether 
incredible that they were so unworthy of their trust, 
as imraediatel}^ upon such a success, to remain ignorant 
for days of the state of things, just on their front, or 
that they were reluctant to rouse Maryland behind us, 
or that their defensive policy would be interfered with by 
seizing the enemy's capital, lying before them, any more 
than his camp equipage or artillerj^, that he left behind 
him. The simple truth is, General Beauregard's troops 
could not be relied upon; he may explain his course 
in after-dinner speeches, and quote Alcibiades till dooms- 
day, 

"■ Audacious drink, and greatly daring dine," 

but turn it as he will, in his carousals in celebration of 
that not unprecedented event in war, a defeat without a 
victory, it could have been alone the discretion which is 
the better part of valor, which, begetting diffidence of the 
materials of his army, made him forbear to snatch so great 
a prize,* 

Here, then, was an army, composed of materials as good 
as ours, longer than we had been under military organiza- 
tion and discipline, which had defended themselves well in 
their position, not only wholly unable to invade, as we 
must, an emeny's country on a long line of operations, but 



* Since the text was wi-ittcn, General Beauregard's official report has been 
added to his speech, and published in the North. It may be taken for abso- 
lute proof, inferring frem what he says, and does not say, because not " pro- 
per to be* * * communicated," of what could not be doubted before. 



14 

unwilling to hazard, in the flush of success, a march of 
thirty-four miles, in the open liekl, to reach his Capital. 
How long must it be before an army of such soldiers 
and such officers could be depended on to make their 
way through the IS^orth to the line of Canada ? If 
the contending parties could have changed places, and we 
had been attacked behind cover, and they our assailants, 
we should have had the victory, and they have undergone 
the defeat ; when they could make no impression on us, 
instead of retreating, they would have fled in disorder, and 
we, in our turn, would have been unable to move and 
gather the harvest of success. 

"Wlien we march our soldiers against those of the South, 
while theirs do exactly the work to which they are compe- 
tent — that of making good in the midst of a friendly popu- 
lation, a region fortified by nature with deep ravines, broad 
rivers, higl^ hills, narrow passes, and the never-ending 
forest ; — we, on the contrary, have to take the open field, 
and there contend with obstacles at every step. The best 
troops, in a position fortified by nature or art, and assailed 
by troops only equally good, may by valor and pertinacity 
of assault, be overcome ; but let both armies be composed 
of raw soldiers, and the troops behind cover fight well, 
while those who have to make an assault requiring vigor 
and determination, cannot be depended on. Jackson, en- 
trenched at ISTew Orleans, with a very imperfect force, suc- 
cessfully resisted excellent troops, but, after having cut 
them to pieces, he allowed them, though a man all fire 
and action, to retreat unmolested, because he did not deem 
it safe to move against them in the field. The attacking 
army at Waterloo, to take another familiar illustration, 
veterans playing desperately their last stake, under a con- 
summate commander, were very superior to the defending 
army, composed of soldiers of difl'erent nations, hastily 
brought together, and some of them so lately on the other 
side, that they were yet in their French uniforms ; but the 



15 

position made tlie diitercnce, aud they fought without 
decisive advantage until the party assailed was reinforced. 
Had the assaiUints been raw^ soldiers, and had the defences 
they attacked, instead of being intrenchments, farm 
buildings and unevennesses of the ground, been such 
prodigious works as are everywhere established by nature 
among us, they would have had no possible chance. When 
General Braddock, Avitli a regular force, undertook to 
penetrate the American forest, his army was destroyed by 
a handful of French soldiers, with a few Canadian militia 
and Indians. 

But a glance at a map, showing the area of the Southern 
States, -which is much greater than that of the territory of 
any European power, except Russia, the State of Texas 
alone being as large as France, or Spain and Portugal, will 
satisfy us that the South have an ally that is altogether in- 
vincible, in space. Space, when the scale is great, is, in a 
war of invasion, too much for any military power that can 
be brought against it. It had well nigh coiiquered Napo- 
leon in Russia, who was exhausted in contending with' 
it before he was attacked by the frost and snow. We 
invaded Canada three several times during the war of 1812, 
in considerable force, and with the fullest confidence of 
overrunning the country, but were, each time, quite unable 
to make any impression on that extended region, defended 
though it was by but few British troops. Alexander the 
Great covered space more vast than that which is before 
our armies, inhabited, however, for the most part, by effemi- 
nate nations,but neither Julius Caesar nor Napoleon everper- 
formed such a feat, and, if they could be brought to Wash- 
ington to advise with Mr. Lincoln, would assure him it was 
not possible. To keep the line open, if that were all, would 
be a military marvel ; and what would communication be, 
and transportation, costing as they do now, when we came 
to reach the Rio Grande ? 

As Lo detached expeditions against the coast, which yerve 



16 

to annoy and distress an enem}', but, however gallantly con- 
ducted, not to carry us into the country, they exasperate the 
population against which they are directed, without advanc- 
ing us an inch beyond the ground we occupy ; of which the 
numerous EiigHsh expeditions to our own shores and those 
of Europe are signal proof If we detach 15,000 men 
ao-aiiist a given point of the Southern coast, the 15,000 put 
there by the enemy to defend it, have infinitely the advan- 
tao-e of them, for they are in their own country, and within 
reach of everything, while we can only communicate with 
our supplies and reinforcements, at great loss of time, and 
the largest expenditure of money. VV'e must be able to 
possess ourselves of not merely Charleston, xTorfolk, New 
Orleans, and Savannah, but the whole country to which 
they belong; and establishing ourselves at these places, 
however important, would give us only a foothold from 
which to make our progress. 

What progress in the conquest of North and South Caro- 
lina have we made from Beaufort, from Ilatteras, from Ro- 
anoke, and in the conquest of Tennessee from Nashville? 
How much would be furthered the work if we occupied 
Richmond? If the Southern troops were withdrawn from 
Viro-inia, NorthCarolina and Tennessee to the country south 
of them, leaving us to operate against the cotton States, 
across a hostile and desolated region, or from the coast, we 
should only be where we were before hostilities began. 

North Carolina and Tennessee were of the Southern 
States, two of the truest to the Union ; North Carolina al- 
ways the antipodes of South Carolina, and Tennessee by 
climate, soil and population, more western than southern, 
and through the powerful and long-exercised influence of 
General Jackson, strongly prejudiced against the doctrines 
of Mr. Calhoun. And now, having occupied the capital of 
Tennessee, and Newbern and other places on the shores of 
North Carolina, what have we done towards bringing back 
those States ? If their Union feeling is not to be stirred by 



IT 

the sound of the Northern drum, of which, probahly, we are 
satisfied, we have to bring thorn back, and then to control 
them, by arms. Has such a task been begun ? Do you ex- 
pect to see it attempted ? Are we to believe it ever will 
be ? And if we are not to think of military reduction of 
the people, and if they do not voluntarily flock to our stan- 
dard, are not, to-day, North Carolina and Tennessee further 
from the Union than before we marched troops on them ; 
infinitely further in Union feeling, and not nearer, milita- 
rily ? 

If, after their success at Bull Run, the South had not 
only seized Washington, but pushing forward, been able to 
hoist the Secession colors over the towns along the southern 
boundary of Pennsylvania, — Philadelphia, Lancaster, York, 
Gettysburg, Pittsburg, and the rest — is it to be inferred that 
the people of this State would be coming forward, to swear 
allegiance to the South; or, that before they could be 
induced to organize a Secession government, pay Secession 
taxes, send Senators and Members to the Secession Con- 
gress, and join the Southern Confederacy, the entire State 
must not be thoroughly reduced by the power of arms ? 
Would seizing those places have given them possession of 
Pennsylvania? Would their armies, in holding them, 
have brought more of our territory under the influence of 
Mr. Jefferson Davis, than exactly that portion of it which 
was within their lines ? Let those who throw up their hats 
and cry, the war is over, or that the beginning of the end 
has arrived, in this or that Southern State, because we have 
made a lodgment there, ask themselves, taking one reflect- 
ing moment to it, what the operation is, by which, and by 
which alone, the military reduction of a country can be 
effected, and they will see the emptiness, idleness, and 
vanity of such a thought. 

If having armies on their soil, be not a commencement 
of the systematic work of military subjugalion, how long we 
can remain at points remote from supply and reinfo-rcement, 
3 



18 

aud what measures of soldierly severity may be, in the 
meantime, required, to keep down discontent and insurrec- 
tion on the part of the inhabitants, are questions that mili- 
tary men must answer ; as the Medical Statf must inform 
ns of the chances of life in the case of northern constitu- 
tions, exposed and tried like those of the soldier, in such 
climates as are found in portions of the southern country, 
after the hot season begins. 

Of what avail would it be, could we navigate, in our gun- 
boats, every stream from the mighty Mississippi to the shal- 
lowest of them, if we did not conquer and take military 
possession of the country which they water ? We have 
been now at war twelve months, and with the best materials 
for an army, to be found in the world — a free people, 
accustomed to the use of fire-arms — what' have we accom- 
plished ? In the hostile country, (I do not speak of semi- 
friendly countries, like Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, 
which, before the fighting began, were wholly friendl}^,) we 
are at certain points on the coast, carried thither by. the 
navy; we are at JSTashville, via, partly, the Cumberland 
river, and have just begun to penetrate Eastern Virginia; 
but we have nowhere penetrated, with our bayonets, to the 
promised stratum of Union feeling ; and we have every- 
where raised against ourselves, in the bosom of the whole 
invaded population, a feeling of detestation, which, when 
they can no longer defend them, exhibits itself in burning 
their houses, crops, towns and villages, before our advanc- 
ing colors, and in some instances, leaving poison behind 
them, as they fled, in the wells, and in the food which our 
troops were to consume ; a feeling of deep hate, which no 
invading army, in any part of the world, ever failed to 
arouse ; for an army is, at best, a terror to the fields and 
cities it pours its flood over; and which, new soldiers, like 
ours, of all others, must needs produce in the most fright- 
ful abundance. Tlie South are discouraged, no doubt of 
it ; they ought to be ; the reality is upon them ; they will 



19 

be unable, unless aided from abroad, to fight us in the 
doubtful States, and must restrict their operations to terri- 
tory absolutely their own, where secession is undiluted • 
and there the tide of battle will roll, with various success 
sometimes with us, sometimes with them, but always in 
brothers' blood, until both parties, disgusted and shocked 
by the unnatural controversy, become satisfied, at last, of 
the truth of what Bishop Berkeley said, that it is not indivi- 
duals alone, but nations sometimes, that go mad. 

Did you ever hear of a peojjle that were conquered ? In 
the great wars of the beginning of the present century, 
kingdoms where overrun, and peace dictated in the capitals 
of half dethroned monarchs ; but the people made no re- 
sistance ; it was only to overcome the army ; and when it 
came, in Spain, and to some degree in Russia, to conquer- 
ing also the inhabitants of the country, military power 
seemed to be dealing with air or water, on which no lasting 
impression could be made. Poland was seized ninety years 
ago, and partitioned by three adjacent neighbors, among 
them, at that and subsequent periods, so greatly their supe- 
riors in strength, that no war for conquest, when the coun- 
try w^as entered, took place ; but, at this day, if we are to 
believe the newspapers, the people in parts of Poland are 
in a state of insurrection. The north of Italy was, during 
some ten centuries, almost constantly under foreign oc- 
cupation, so powerful as to be overwhelming; but the peo- 
ple where not changed into Grermans, Frenchmen, or Span- 
iards, when they sate on their necks in turn ; they remained 
Italians, always discontented and revolting, and now seem, 
with the aid of foreign intervention, to have thrown off 
the yoke at last. Do we entertain of our own blood so poor 
an opinion, as for a moment to suppose we could ever beat 
into the Union the people of the South ? 

The great powers of Europe are constantly fighting, but 
how often do they make a conquest of one another, in Mr 
Lincoln's sense of taking, holding and keeping ? Although 



20 

it is to be observed tbat in a war for conquest, they would 
have the great advantage over us, of operating, not only 
with long organized armies, supplied with all the material 
of scientific war, but also in territory, dotted at every 
strategical point, with fortified places and strongholds, by 
means of which, when the conquest is made, the country 
can be held ; while our armies, on the contrary, in this, so 
lately happy and peaceful land of ours, if the South were 
conquered, would have to keep it, not with soldiers at Dant- 
zica and Magdeburgs, but lying in the fields and open 
towns. If the Southern country were handed over to us 
to-day, and we were permitted to put down so many men 
here, and so many there, at points selected for the purpose, 
by military skill, how long could we hold it? 

When the Cabinet say to an officer, there is the ene- 
my, take an army and operate against him, he obeys, 
whatever he may think of the chancer of success ; but that 
is not enough for the country, whose all is at stake. When 
the Government shall tell us that a military scheme has 
been submitted, not for a movement, which may prove use- 
ful, on the Potomac, the Cumberland, or the Mississippi, 
which, or any other such, can be made for the Sonth, as 
well as for the North, and can only be a victory, more or 
less serving to keep up the price of public securities, and 
float the Administration for a certain number of days ; but 
a comprehensive plan for the general subjugation of the 
Southern States, despite all opposition of the population of 
that part of the country, then, and not till then, the people 
of the North will begin to think possible, what they now 
deem out of the question. 

We may not be right, we people of Pennsylvania, who 
have seen no enemy since Sir William Howe left us ; but 
these are our opinions of the war now waging against our 
brethren of the South. 

And if we be wrong, are not compromise and conciliation 
better than war ? We have, among the powers of the world, 



21 

one friend, the great head of the Russian Empire: and in 
the late note of his Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Kep- 
resentative of the Government of the Czar at Washington, 
on the Mason and Slidell difficulty, he is told to reiterate 
to the President " the assurance of * * * the satisfaction 
"with which his Imperial Majesty would see the American 
"Union consolidated by measures of coNciLiATroN." 

Why should not the strong conciliate; why should not 
the head of an army of seven hundred and eighteen thousand 
men compromise ? Whoever, let him he the most passionate 
Repubican of them all, will recollect what always has been 
and now is the way of the world, must admit that comprom- 
ise is not a polic}', but a necessity. In religion, what we 
call toleration, which is compromise, has become the rule of 
Christendom ; the opposite system being abandoned. If 
the Emperor of Germany had compromised with the Pro- 
testant influence, his successor, this day, would be the ar- 
biter of Europe ; but he preferred war, and after thirty years' 
fighting had to come to compromise at last, with a loss of 
power which never has been, or can be recovered. George 
III. was an uncompromising monarch, and lost his thirteen 
colonies. James II., in the same way, lost his crown. 
Wellington was called the Iron Duke, but he was a man of 
eminent good sense, and he compromised with the Catholics 
rather than quarrel with them. The first N'apoleon ruined 
himself by an uncompomrising foreign policy ; but his 
papers, now in course of publication by the present Emperor^ 
show that in the early period of his career, when everything 
succeded to which he put his hand, his system was the very 
contrary of what, afterwards, it became. In England, 
where power and influence are in the hands of the few, 
they retain it, by, from time to time, compromising with the 
many, and nobody doubts that without it, the question be- 
tween the parties would have to be settled by main force. 
The Constitution of the United States was, in the strictest 
sense, a compromise, and unattainable on any other terms. 



22 

The Missouri Compromise was repealed in 1854, and agita- 
tion redoubled its violence. The so-called compromise 
with South Carolina, in 1833, was not a compromise, it was 
a surrender. 

Moderation is with us, who, in our career hitherto, have 
little consulted the opinion of others, more than a duty. 
We, for the first time since the achievement of our inde- 
pendence, bend to the judgment of foreign nations. With 
France and England, who have armed in jealousy of one 
another; who are ready for war, and in a state of prepara- 
tion for naval hostilities, on a scale of unprecedented mag- 
nitude, any untoward event, such as we have seen in the 
Mason and Slidell difficulty — and, when blows are exchang- 
ing, and belligerent and neutral rights in constant ques- 
tion, another might occur at any moment^ — would serve as 
an excuse for intervention in our affairs. And what would, 
more than anything, in the eyes of Europe strengthen their 
position, and weaken ours, wouldbe the fact of our carrying 
on our war, in a manner unusual among civilized nations ; 
unaccompanied with ofters of peace, and insisting on uncon- 
ditional submission. The sensibilities of the world, when 
they desire to be shocked, are easily aroused. Rage against 
rebellious subjects, has been thought inhuman, when the 
people of Poland and Hungary were threatened with it by 
despotic and oflfended masters; but in the case of a differ- 
ence among one another of citizens of a Republic, dating 
its recent existence from a successful revolt, there is an air 
about it which has already been the subject of criticism 
among those trans- Atlantic nations, which, Mr. Seward 
must have satisfied himself, when he surrendered the pas- 
sengers by the Trent, are masters of the game, whenever 
they choose to come in. 

And are they not masters of it ? Are we not at the mer- 
cy of foreign countries ? Is it not in their power, by inter- 
vention in favor of the South, to settle our fate, and sink 
us? And why shouldthey not intervene, to-morrow, to-day, 



23 

at any moment ? Doubtless they would prefer to find rea- 
sons for it, answering, as they do, to one another, at the 
bar of the world ; but those are not always waited for, as 
Ave see in many instances, our own, among the rest. 
Our independence having been declared only nineteen 
months before, on the 6th of February, 1778, our excellent, 
and never to be forgotten friend, Louis XVL, not pausing 
upon a recognition, or to raise a blockade, or for any minor 
object, entered with our provisional government, at once, 
upon a treaty of alliance, oftensive and defensive, which was 
followed, soon after, by a French fleet and army sent to 
our aid, there being for intervention no better reason than 
a desire to damage Great Britain, l^or can we have 
already forgotten our recent treatment of Mexico, in the 
case of Texas, l^ations do not love one another; and Ave, 
AA'ho have added rough manners to conduct not ahvays 
satisfactory, must not expect to be dealt with from the 
point of justice and morality. 

We must bear also in mind the natural desire of aristocra- 
tically ruled countries,to witness the fiiilure of our institutions. 
The sentiment of sympathy, in the United States,was loud 
and universal, when, in the eventful year of 1848, croAvns 
seemed to be falling off the heads of the monarchs of Eu- 
rope; and shall they not rejoice, though too well bred to 
say so, Avhen, in 18G2, the Republic, Avbose prosperous ca- 
reer Avas daily encouragement to those domestic discontents, 
which are their main affliction, seems crumbling to the 
ground ? The true mode, and the only one, of considering 
the question of intervention, is recalling Avhat so often has 
happened in the history of nations, to assure ourselves that 
Avhen it becomes decidedly the interestof any foreign coun- 
try to interpose betAveen us and the South, the interposition 
will speedily follo^A^ 

But they say to you, shall Ave treat Avith traitors ? Shall 
we deal Avith rebellion as if it were virtue ? If the question 
lay between parties who could refer their diflerence to a 



24 

court of justice, the reasoning might be good, but we talk 
of nations. We cannot punish a whole people : even Nero 
professed himself unable to do that. Certainly, the safest 
and best rule, as well for communities, as for individuals, 
is obedience to the laws ; but the idea of dealing with re- 
bellious millions as we would with a bad citizen is inadmis- 
sible. In the days when there were no people, rebellion, 
which was an afiair of the chiefs onlj'-, could sometimes be 
"crushed out ;" but now the masses play their part, and to 
speak of millions of rebels and millions of traitors is a poli- 
tical misnomer. When in 1776, to start on that brilliant 
career, now eclipsed, perhaps forever, we shook off the 
British allegiance and declared our independence, George 
III. regarded us in no other light than that of rebels and 
traitors. But he did not so treat us, though he hated us 
most thoroughly. 

Practically, it matters not how unnatural the rebellion, 
how just the cause o± the North, bow indefensible the 
course of the South, for the question must be regarded from 
quite another platform; the concession, namely, that the 
South maintain what they believe to be their rights. We 
take up the argument on false principles when we take it 
up in anger, and make it turn on the South being wrong. 
The question is not, whether they are right, but whether 
they believe they are right, and are in earnest. Anger may 
be very well in the field, when the enemy is before us, but 
an angry government is an absurdity. Secession is a mala- 
dy, which has affected Northern Churches, as well as South- 
ern States ; the Society of Friends, the Presbyterians, and 
other religious denominations, have had their divisions, but 
what is called their New School, though schismatic, is 
sincere. If Mr. Jefferson Davis, in his inaugural speech at 
Bichmoud, appeals to God, to protect and bless the people 
who chose him to rule over them, shall Mr. Lincoln, after 
his own speech of 1848, in vindication of the right of in- 
surrection, to which I will presently refer you, say he is not 



25 

sincere ? The Right Reverend head of the diocese ot 
Louisiana leads in the field, a body of troops, a crime to 
parallel which we must go back to medieval abominations ; 
but does any man doubt his zeal ? The women and child- 
ren are, in the South, everywhere on fire with secession 
are we to set it down as hypocrisy ? Mr. Rives, a man of 
the highest character, of the most conservative views, and 
opposed, on strong conviction, to the secession movement, is 
a member of the Confederate Government; is he acting un- 
willingly ? The South, like the North, is full of citizens, 
sound in thinking, and pure of life, and they all unite in 
sustaining their government. They do not struggle against 
but enthusiastically support it. 

How much out of the question it may be, that those 
who enjoy high places in the South, could be induced to 
listen to terms, the President and Cabinet can judge; but 
whoever will read the note of the 14th August, 18G1,* of 
the Southern Commissioners, at London, to Earl Russell, 
in which those gentlemen, late the extreme advocates of 
slavery, reverently approach what they call " the anti- 
" slavery sentiment, so universally prevalent in England," 
" that high, philanthropic consideration, which undoubtedly 
" beats in the hearts of so many in England," can come to 
no other conclusion, than that the Southern statesmen, to 
conciliate an enemy^ will pass through the eye of a needle. 
If the Southern masses can read that letter, by which they 
are made to knock under to the base bigotry of Exeter 
Hall, to the prejudices of the most inveterate foe of their 
institutions, to deprecate his haughty dislike, and, 
having: sued in vain to one that never would touch but to 
ruin them, can refuse terms of restoration to this Union, 
which is theirs as much as ours, and which, alone can pro- 
tect their negro property, the fury of civil war must have 
blinded them indeed. It is not to be credited that the peo- 



*See it, as lately published in all tlic newspapers. 



26 

pie oftlic South — I speak not of those who think the j have 
founded an Emph-e; leaders pledged by ambition, and 
oaths of office, to perpetual separation from the ]!l^orth, but 
the population generally — should prefer to shiver in the 
blast of the " anti-slavery sentiment, so universally preva- 
" lent in England," rather than be reconciled to their own 
countrymen. Is it possible that the citizens of the South 
know what, already, they have come to — that their repre- 
sentatives wait, in English anti-chambers, to palliate their 
sin by laying it on the IS'orth, that they, too, are for slavery? 
Do they know that, at London, to propitiate the mighty 
"genius of universal emancipation," it is represented, in their 
behalf, as matter of reproach to us of the North, " that, after 
" the battle Bull Run, both branches of the Congress, at 
" "Washington, passed resolutions, that the war is only waged 
" to uphold that pro-slavery Constitution, and to enforce the 
" laws, many of them pro-slavery, and of one hundred and 
" seventy-two votes in the lower house, they received all 
" but two, and in the Senate all but one vote?" If they do 
not, let them read this dispatch and be instructed. 

Nothing could, better than this letter to the British 
foreign Secretary, illustrate the fact, that no country, based 
on negro slavery, as modern society is organized, can have 
a safe, independent national existence ; and how sensible 
those persons are, on whom has been devolved the office 
of providing for the fortunes of the seceding States, that 
they have not within themselves the elements of nation- 
ality; that the South, now little more than an aggre- 
gation of farms, to become a nation, must be born 
again ; that to acquire that variety of articulation which 
goes to the national composition and quality, their whole 
frame of things must be renewed; that to retain their 
property they must restore themselves to the colonial rela- 
tion with some European power, or come back to this 
Union. 

In this paper, a study for every citizen of the South, the 



2T 

folly of tliG secession movement developes itself at its first 
diplomatic step, as does the weakness of our N'ortliern po- 
sition, in the diplomacy of Mr. Seward. The extreme 
Southern leaders delighted to call themselves fire-eaters, but 
what is eating fire to eating one's words and principles ? 
To the proud stomach, fire ought to be a less uncomfort- 
able diet than that on which the South have put them- 
selves. When, for the sake of slavery, they left the Union to 
establish a slave republic, they did not reflect, in the haste 
of their movement, that the prejudices of mankind would 
not tolerate such an establishment; just as in counting 
cotton as king, they missed the fact that a rich and weak 
nation is the poorest of all nations, and that, if their cotton 
were really necessary to the world, the world would come 
aaid take it, as they would come and dig their soil if gold were 
found under it. When we think of all this extravagance 
of Southern error, when we think how the Korth cruelly 
and long goaded them to it, and that it is mutual ruin ; 
ruin to us as much as to them ; that this slavery was pro- 
sperity to the ITorth, and mischief, only to Southern 
masters ; that the territorial rights asked by the South, 
though very well to quarrel about, were, to practical pur- 
poses, nothing, and in themselves, but fair and equal jus- 
tice, and that, could we but have forborne family diflierence, 
and a few years longer remained united, we might have, 
" confident against a world in arms," shaken slavery and 
freedom, both, in their faces ; — when we think what we 
ought to be, and see what we have come to, it is perfectly 
heart-breaking ! 

Emancipation is a word which sounds to virtue, for who 
can doubt that Slavery is a blight to any region in which it 
is tolerated ? But it means with us in the United States, to say 
nothing of the Constitution and laws of the land, and the 
rights of property, that four millions of negroes, 
now slaves, should be freed and added to five hundred 
thousand already free negroes that are among us, making 



28 

four million five liundred thousand emancipated Africans, 
to be taken up into the channels of circulation of a body 
now overloaded and oppressed from the inability to absorb 
the five hundred thousand. And, as no time or tonnage 
would sufiice, supposing the enormous sum of money ne- 
cessary to such a purpose provided, to transport a nation of 
negroes to foreign parts, one of two events must happen; 
these unhappy beings, as the inferior and degraded race, 
excluded from the career of life, will miserably decay, by 
slow degrees, in the course of ages of oppression, or be more 
suddenly, but not more inhumanly, butchered in a war of 
races.* 

But fanaticism which will not compromise, does not rea- 
son; nor do they, in any just sense, who, for political ob- 
jects, avail themselves of it. After the death of Mr. Clay, 
the emancipation party, made up of 'New Englandf bigots, 
and clouds of unscrupulous politicians of all parts of the 
country, which had of late made immense strides, obtain- 



* Within the last few days, there have been discharged upon this town, a 
number, variously estimated at from three to seven hundred, of negro slaves, 
sent hither, it is said, from the head-quarters of Major General Nathaniel Banks 
of the Massachusetts militia, father of the famous expression, "Let the Union 
elide!" being trophies of his warfare in Virginia; some, from age, filth and 
infectious disease, fit only for the hospital ; others, young and vigorous 
enough to depredate upon the community, till they can be lodged in the jails. 

f But for their persistent intolerance, it is sooth to say, that the slavery 
question would have had its day and gone by, like all the rest, from 
the funding of the revolutionary debts, to the surrender of Mason and 
Slidell; and the country would now be at peace, for not a State of the 
Union, but the six furthest from the slaves and having the least to do 
with them, would have pressed the agitation. The same spirit of persecution, 
which in the history of New England manifested itself from its earliest 
colonial period, and fastened, from time to time, upon various objects has for 
the last twenty-five years been concentrated on the South. The people of 
New England possess many admirable qualities, and the citizens of Pennsyl- 
vania have a high respect for them, but to be divorced from Virginia to 
marry Massachusetts is not a change of condition which comes within their 
views. 



29 

ing possession of several of the State governments, and 
advancing in political influence generally, put forward for 
the lead of the opposition to the Democratic party ; till then 
controlled and kept within bounds by Mr. Clay. They 
succeeded in getting it, and established themselves in 
1854, for the lirst time, on what may be called a national 
footing, by the election of Mr. Banks as the Speaker of the 
House of Representatives, who was nominated and carried 
after a desperate struggle of several weeks of ballotino- as 
the avowed anti-slavery, abolition Candidate. It was from 
the Speaker's chair, which was the prize in 1854, they went 
forward to their full success in 1860. 

And now, is it the cue of this controlling influence to restore 
the country to quiet, to come to terms, and make peace with 
the South, on the footing of the Constitution and the Union? 
Is that the object with which they pursue the war? Does 
the anti-slavery interest, the active principle which scatter- 
ing before it the less energetic particles of Republicanism, 
has turned to its uses Mr, Lincoln's government, notwith- 
standing the wishes and prayers of a great majority of the 
votes which elevated him — do they want harmony? We 
must be credulous to think so. Would not any reader 
of the proceedings of Congress suppose that we were 
engaged in foreign war; and that the design of the 
government, without exposing themselves to the male- 
dictions of the world, by proclaiming freedom to the slaves, 
was to damage, as much as possible, the enemy, through 
his vulnerable side — that of slavery ? If he were shown the 
provisions of the Constitution of the United States, and then 
the acts of Congress and orders to officers in the field, on the 
subject of negro slaves, how small, would he suppose, were 
executive and legislative reverence for organic law ? Could 
he doubt — do any of us doubt — that the present Execu- 
tive and Legislature ot the United States, if not checked, 
will come at last, to what many of them long for now, a 
proclamation of universal emancipation? The simple truth 



30 

is that, of tlie men now uppermost no small number have 
so long and so cordially hated the government of the country, 
that they maybe said to have hated the country itself; and 
under their present cry for the flag and the war, conceal a 
strong desire of deadly mischief. 

Is there a test by which they can be judged, the diplo- 
macy of Mr. Seward, the measures of Congress, the con- 
stant language of the members, the appointments to place, 
the tone of the press, which can be construed in any other 
way than that to turn loose the negro, and injure and insult 
his owner, is the policy of the administration ? Is there the 
man who does not see that the course which has been pur- 
sued on the point where the whole South, slaveholding or 
not, are most sensitive, and on which they are unanimous, is 
not only disturbing and insulting, but is meant to be — even 
to the gentlemen representing the border slave States in 
the Senate and House, who ought, of all others, to be treated 
Math the most reconciling forbearance. Under such influ- 
ences, the position of the country is a perfect dilemma ; we 
must have victory, for if the South conquer us, the Union 
never will be restored; yet each military success being an 
addition to the strength of the abolitionists, the cry of 
emancipation, which is disunion, is only the louder for it. 

Restore the Union, and where would these real and pre- 
tended fanatics be ? Would it not be the downfall forever of 
all the hopes of the party now in power ; would not aboli- 
tionist be the most odious of epithets ; would not Northern 
democratic and Southern votes be again united, no longer 
to be startled by the anti-slavery halloo, and is there one of 
them that could politically survive the return of the seced- 
ing States to the fold of the Constitution ? 

To be in favor of the Union is one thing, to be in favor of 
the Union and the Constitution is another. What these men 
want is to keep the Union and break up the Constitution ; 
and in that sense they are all for the Union. That late res- 
pectable cut-throat, Mr. John Brown, was in favor of the 



31 

Union. The high-scented negro, wliom the President in his 
message to Congress* at the opening of the present session, 
beckons over as Ambassador from Ilayti, will be in favor 
of the Union ; the extremest worshippers at the African 
altar, who, in their love for the black family, or their blind 
hate of certain portions of the white, counselled Mr. Lin- 
coln to solicit this accession to the diplomatic corps, to el- 
bow his way among Senators and Secretaries at drawing- 
rooms and levees, are all in favor of Union. But what 
Union ? — a Union which no e}' e will see ! 

To bring back the South as territorj-, not States, or with- 
out their slaves, or crippled in their condition of equality, 
might comport with the designs of those icho drive Mr. 
Lincoln's machine, but when we recollect in what light 
they have, from the beginning, regarded the now broken 
compact with slave-holders, it would be downright sim- 
plicity to suppose that any party, controlled by them, should 
desire a restoration of it on terms that are either fair or possi- 
ble. Is it not intelligible that, rather than it should come 
back, they would say in their hearts after us the deluge, and 
let the country go forward on its road of revolution? 



* "If any good reason exists why we should persevere longer in withhold- 
"ing our recoguition of the independence and sovereignty of Ilayti and Li- 
Iberia, I am unable to discern it. Unwilling, however, to inaugurate a novel 
"policy in regard to them without the approbation of Congress, I submit for 
"your consideration the expediency of an appropriation for maintaining a 
"Charge d'Affaires near each of those States." — Message of the Presi- 
dent, Zd December, 1861. Mr. Lincoln is said to be a well-meaning man, and 
perhaps is so, having in that, however, no advantage over nineteen-twen- 
tieths of his fellow-citizens ; but is it conceivable that any but the most devil- 
ish spirit of disunion could have dictated to him, for it is not to be believed 
the malice was his own, such a suggestion at such a time ; not only abhorrent 
to the interests and instincts of the slaveholding country, but of all the North 
too, that is not absolutely abolitionized ; as disgusting to us in Pennsylvania, 
as to you. Mr. Lincoln desires, we are told, to avoid too close communion 
with the extreme emancipationists, but it doth not appear, and in'such a pro- 
posal one may see the hand, in his message, of the silliest and worst of them. 



32' 

But even as I write to you, the proof presents itself, 
and deduction ceases to be useful. We need no longer 
infer the project of th« party; you have now in the vote of 
the House of Representatives of the 3d of March, on Mr. 
Holman's resolution, the authoritative admission that the 
object of the war is not "the restoration of the authority 
of the Constitution." In a House of one hundred and 
twelve members, on motion of Mr. Lovejoy, of Illinois, 
Mr. Holman's resolution, that it was the sense of the 
House, that the war w^as a war for, and not against the 
Union and the Constitution, was laid on the table by sixty 
votes to fifty-eight, onlythirteeD members of the Republian 
party voting against Mr. Lovejoy, and but a single Demo- 
crat voting with him. Here is more than could have been 
looked for so soon ; for you have a present avowal of what 
it might have been supposed would yet a little longer be 
denied by all but the thorough-paced abolitionists, who, to 
do them justice, never disguise anything. I give you the 
resolution, and the yeas and nays on it, with the politics 
of each voter affixed, as found in a Republican newspaper, 
of the fourth of this month, in t|ie daily report of Con- 
gressional proceedings. 

Mr. Holman (Dem), of Indiana, offered a resolution declaring tliat, in the 
judgment of this House, the unfortunate civil war into which the Government 
of the United States has been forced by the treasonable attempt of Southern 
Secessionists to desti"oy the Union, should not be prosecuted for any other pur- 
pose than the restoration of the authority of the Constitution and welfare of 
the whole people of the United States, who are permanently involved in the 
preservation of our present form of government without modification or 
change. 

Mr. Love-joy, (Rep.) of Illinois, moved to lay the resolution on the table. 
Carried — yeas 60, nays 58. 

YEAS.— Aldrich, Rep. ; Alley, Rep. ; Arnold, Rep. ; Ashley, Rep. ; Babbitt, 
Rep.; Baker, Rep.; Baxter, Rep.; Beaman, Rep.; Bingham, Rep.; Blair, Rep, Pa. 
Blake, Rep. ; Buffinton, Rep. ; Burnham, R,ep. ; Campbell, Rep. ; Chamberlain; 
Rep. ; Clark, Rep. ; Colfax, R^p. ; Conkling, Fred. A. Rep. ; Conkling, R,. 
Rep. ; Conway, Rep. ; Cravens. Dem. ; Cutler, Rep, ; Davis, Rep. ; Delano, 
Rep. ; Duell, Rep. ; Ely, Rep. ; Fessenden, Rep. ; Franchot, Rep. ; Frank Rep. ; 
Hooper, Rep. ; Hutchins, Rep. ; Kellog, Rep, ^lich. ; Lansing, Rep. ; Loomis, 
Rep. ; Lovejoy, Rep. ; McKnight, Rep. ; McPherson, Rep. ; Mitchell; Rep. ; 
Moorhead, Rep. ; Morrill, Rep, Me. ; Morrill, Rep, Vt. ; Patton, Rep. ; Pike, 
Rep.; Pomeroy, Rep.; Rice, Rep, Me.; Riddle, Rep.; Sargeant, Rep.; Sedgwick, 
Rep. ; Shanks, Rep. ; Stevens, Rep. ; Trowbridge, Rep. ; Van Wyck, Rep. ; 
Verree, Rep.; Wallace, Rep. ; Walton, Rep, Me. ; Wheeler, Rep. ; WJiite, Rep, 



33 

Ind. ; Wilson, Republican ; Windom, Republican ; Worcester, Republican 
NAYS —Bailey, Dem. Pa. ; Biddle, Dem, ; Blair, U. Va. ; Browne, U. R. I. 
Brown, U. Va.; Calvert, U. ; Clement d, U. ; Cobb, Uera. ; Corning, Dem. 
Cox, Dem. ; Crisfiekl, U. ; Crittenden, U. ; Diven. Rep. ; Dunl.ap, U. ; Dunn 
Rep. ; Goodwin, Rep. . Granger, Rep. ; Hale, Rep. ; Hall, U. ; Harding, U. 
Harrison, U. ; Holman, Dem. ; Horton, Rep. ; Johnson, Dem. ; Kellogg 
Rep, ni. ; Knapp, Rep. ; Law, Dem. ; Lazear, Dem. ; Leary, U. ; Mallory, U. 
Maynard, U. ; Menzies, U. ; Nixon, Rep. ; Noble, Dem. ; Noell, Dem. 
Norton, Dem. ; Nugent, Dem. ; Odell, Dem. ; Pendleton, Dem. ; Perry, Dem. 
Richardson, D. ; Robinson, Dem. ; Rollins, U. Mo. ; Sheffield, U. ; Shcllabar- 
ger. Rep. ; Smith, Dem. ; Steele, Dem, N. Y. ; Slratton, Rep. ; Thomas, 
Rep. Mass. ; Thomas, U. Md. : Trimble, Rep. ; Vibbard, Dem. ; Wadswortli, 
U. ; Webster, U. ; Whaley, U. : Wickliffe, U. : Woodruife, Dem. ; AVright, U. 

In the same paper of the 5th March, is the following para- 
graph : 

In the House to-day, Mr. Low of Indiana, corrected his vote on Mr. Holman'b 
resolution, offered yesterdar, declaring "that, in the. judgment of theHouse, 
thewar should not be pro.secuted for any other purpose than to preserve the 
Constitution in its present form," so that there was a tie vote ; but the Speaker 
announced that he voted in the affirmative, so that still tabled the resolution. 

Thus it appears, called forth by Mr. Holman's motion a 
little prematurely for the Republican leaders — but the gates 
were forced opeu and the monster revealed — that they 
fight not to maintain the Union and the Constitution, but 
to make a revolution to destroy the Union, to cancel the 
Constitution, and in Mr. Lincoln's words of 1848, to 
" shake oif the existing government and form a new one 
that suits them better." The question being presented 
in the^^simplest and most direct form of parliamentary 
test, that of a resolution of the House— a resolution, 
unclogged with foreign matter, unmixed with anything 
more questionable than the Constitution and Union,— the 
abolitionists, on a call of the yeas and nays, boldly decline 
to abide by the country and its existing institutions, and 
lay on the table " the restoration of the authority of the 
Union and welfare of the whole people of the United 
States." They vote them dowm— and the mass of their 
republican followers vote with them ! 

I will ask you now, to recur with me, as bearing upon 
the political justice of a settlement with the South, to some 
4 



34 

points of party history, as well recent as more remote. I 
desire by them to recall to your recollection that it is empha- 
tically to the hard and uncompromising course of the friends 
of Mr. Lincoln we have to attribute as its immediate cause 
our present unhappy condition ; and that the dogma to 
which the people of the South betook themselves for 
refuge from the anti-slavery hurricane, has flourished in 
other States than the slave holding, and in other times than 
those of 1860-1. 

"What is by the Uepublicans reproachfully called the 
slave power had, as they truly insist, with the aid of the 
Northern Democrats, ruled the Union for the much more con- 
siderable portion of the period which elapsed from the first 
election of Mr. Jefferson to the recent elevation of Mr. Lin- 
coln. Instinctively opposed to over-governing, they, upon 
the whole, ruled judiciously, the let-alone policy prevailing, 
and never interrupted by the coming in of the opposing party 
without damage to the country, through the forcing system. 
Nor was there anything in this that revolted Northern 
pride ; they did not ask, nor seek, nor want what the 
South so much valued. They attended to their affairs at 
home, and any traveller who opened his eyes and looked 
at the shining face of the prosperous North, and then at 
the laggard South, must have recognized the wisdom of 
their choice. But with the disproportion between the two 
parts of the country as it grew, and with increasing national 
wealth and power as they advanced, came the desire of 
the auti- democratic part of the North to possess so 
considerable a prize as the administration of them ; and 
with it the temptation to take for their allies that active 
and extreme faction which were fanatically bent upon the 
abolition of slavery. The abolitionists gave at once to the 
struggle a sectional character, of the most violent and 
unsparing kind, and backed it by the fiercest denunciation of 
negro bondage so that when the North called upon the 
South to surrender the reins of government, they accom- 



35 

panied it with a cry for their property. The South, 
would fain have kept power as long; as they could, 
and have contended, like other men, for mastery when it 
did not belong to them. Bat as they well knew, their slave 
property could never be as safe as when the Union pro- 
tected it, their opposition to JSTorthern ascendancy, fairly 
insisted on, would not, nor is it easy to. imagine why it 
should, have led them beyond the limits of Constitutional 
resistance ; and it was a bitter insult, a grievous wrong and 
lamentable mistake, when, after long and violent anti-sla- 
very agitation, the South conducting themselves no worse 
than would any injured and perplexed minority, the elec- 
tion of anti-slavery candidates for the Presidency and 
Vice-presidency, with an anti-slaver}^ platform, inaugurated 
in Kovember, 1860, the final triumph of the exclusive 
North. 

The elevation of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Hamlin, to the 
eyes of all that chose to see things as they were, and they 
included the greater number of those who had cast their 
ballots against the Republican candidates, could not but 
cause a political crisis; which they flattered themselves would 
bring with it nothing more serious than a convention of the 
slave-holding States, to be followed, they hoped, by some 
arrangement, which if it did not deaden the fury of the 
anti-slavery agitation', at least would blunt its eft'ects. But 
the preposterous example of South Carolina, bent upon at 
once withdravv'ing from the Union, and taking measures 
accordingly, led, in an evil hour, the people of Georgia, 
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Arkansas and 
Texas, to prepare for immediate secession, should it become, 
as they might deem, expedient ; and upon the new Presi- 
dent depended the course ot action of each of these States. 

Mr. Lincoln's advent to Washington was looked for with 
hope, unknown though he was, to the country, and deep 
anxiety ; but it soon developed itself, in his addresses deli- 
vered by the way, that we were not to find in the Republi- 



can President, at a juncture that so much needed them, 
either the will, or the understanding of a statesman. Ar- 
rived at the centre of movement, he exercised no influence 
that was not negative, or more than belonged to inaction. 
He had, in one of his speeches on the road from Spring- 
field, been reported as saying, with a levity now known to 
be characteristic, that he would drive the machine as he found 
it; and such seemed really to be the limit of his ambition. 
The whole session of Congress, before and after Mr. Lin- 
coln's appearance, was a chaos of resolutions, and proposals 
of arrangements, by members from the middle States and 
Southern border, and mutual defiance of the extreme 
South and extreme North. Bui no State, South Carolina 
excepted, was irrational, for no other desired to leave the 
Union ; not that there were not persons in the South, and 
members of the Southern delegations in Washington, who, 
like the Korthern abolitionists, desired the worst, men 
blinded by passion, or ruled by the desire of change. But 
to be able to move, they must carry their States with 
them, and the Southern masses, like those of the North, 
were for the Union. The .Union majority of Missouri 
was upwards of eighty thousand on a test vote; that 
of Virginia fifty-six thousand; Tennessee and North Caro- 
lina refused to stir, so did even Arkansas ; in the Alabama 
Convention, the votes were for Secession sixty-one, against 
it thirty-nine ; in Georgia so small was the popular majority 
for Secession, that a change of three or four hundred votes 
would have turned the scale. It was well understood that 
the adoption of the resolutions offered by Mr. Crittenden, 
and earnestly and solemnly pressed by him with all his 
weight of influence, would have left South Carolina to se- 
cede alone. If the President elect had but signified to his 
friends that their passage would be agreeable to him, the 
mischief would have stopped — the Union losing for the mo- 
ment a single State. In Pennsylvania they would have 
been voted at the polls with no party opposition, for the 



37 

politicians would not have ventured to contend with the 
current, so strongly did it set in. Nor is it credible that 
the masses anywhere, even in New England would have 
rejected them ; and petitions from the people poured into 
Washington, covered with names of those who had ex- 
pended their time and thousands of their dollars to elect 
Mr. Lincoln, but now alarmed, and earnestly praying for 
measures of harmony. 

We cannot bring back the past, but let us, for present 
instruction, bear in mind, that what the people wanted, the 
leaders refused because to save the country would have 
damaged themselves. The President was not yet installed, 
the patronage all undistributed, and to yield to the pressure 
from without and settle with the South, was to let down the 
pegs of every republican who had come to Washington as 
a place hunter, with no other merit than that of uncom- 
promising hostility to slavery. The cry of the people for 
peace and union was so nearly universal, that the abolition 
influence seemed for a moment to quail, and nothing re- 
mained utterly unappeasable but the sacred thirst of the 
crowd that besieged the doors of the treasury. It is a me- 
lancholy truth, that if the ci'isis could have occurred after, 
instead of before the patronage had been distributed, there 
probably would have been a settlement and not a rupture ; 
for then, of a hundred politicians, the disappointed ninety- 
nine would have been sulky and silent, and the hundredth 
a place-holder and content. 

Nothing was done ; the fourth of March came. South 
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and 
Florida had left the Union ; and the border States had 
remained ; but the places — the places — those rewards of 
the faithful, which before, they were only looking for, 
they were now in the act of receiving, and the Gov- 
ernment engrossed in giving. Future ages will with dif- 
culty believe that down to the 14th of April, the day 
after the Fall of Fort Sumter, no move was made by the 



38 

new government towards saving us ; but the message of 
the President, with the papers accompanying it, at the 
opening of the session of Congress, the 4th of July, 1861, 
are before the country, and put it beyond the possibility of 
doubt.* That Mr. Lincoln must have a cabinet to advise 
him is very certain ; angl, if they thought it necessary, the 
appointment of new representatives abroad, at the more 
important Courts, is intelligible ; but that a government 
should have actually spent their time in emptying and fill- 
ing little offices, of which it was of no sort of public moment 
whether the incumbent was of one party or the other, at 
such a juncture, is utterly inconceivable. It was the 
Greeks of the lower empire on the benches of the circus 
when the enemy was thundering at the gates. 

Six precious weeks passed after the 4th of March, as the 
three months that preceded it, with nothing done to meet 
an exigency which it was in their power to control. The 
President says his " policy" was " time, discussion, and the 
ballot box." These were the measures of action, as de- 
noted in the 4tli of July message, fresolved on for the res- 
cue of the Union ! '" Time, discussion, and the ballot- 
box !" They might be well enough for the States which 
had seceded, and useful in those that never would secede ; 
but Virginia, North Carolina, Marjdand, Tennessee, Ken- 
tucky, Missouri, where the Union men were in large major- 
ities, but needed a helping hand and encouraging word; 
where events were precipitating themselves ; which the se- 



* It had nearly been much worse than doing nothing; the unanswered let- 
ters of the late Mr. Justice Campbell, of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, to Mr. Seward, dated Washington, the 13th and 30th of April, 1861, 
and publishecf soon after in all the newspapers, are proofs too clear to be 
doubted, and it never has been doubted, that the Administration were on the 
very point of tamely surrendering Fort Sumter to the authorities of South Car- 
olina ! ! ! 

f See the first two pages of the Message, for the President's exposition 
of his policy. 



39 

ceding States must carry with them or fail, and to which 
every secediog hand would apply a torch, was " time, dis- 
cussion and the ballot-hox," a policy for them? "Time, 
discussion and the ballot-box" meant the chapter of acci- 
dents. But soon Fort Sumter was fired upon and fell ; the 
stars and stripes were hauled down, the rattlesnake hoisted 
in their stead ; the indignant North started to their feet, 
and Mr. Lincoln had his cue, and a "policy!" It was a 
fitting prelude to the Mason and Slidell dilemma. There 
the Government waited and were swept into disgraceful 
peace; here they waited and were swept into uncompro- 
mising war. Five States, of the six which went out before 
Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, and three of the four which 
went out after, have been lost to us because, while he could 
not make up his mind, the Abolitionists had made up theirs 
to rid the Union of the slave States. 

Thus, out of the extreme purposes of some of the Southern 
leaders, the greediness of the seekers of office, the malig- 
nant violence of the Abolitionists, and the miserable weak- 
ness of the President, came the final event of actual seces- 
sion. 

But the ground was laid for it long ago, and not in the 
South alone. Secession was the plague of confederacies 
long before America was discovered; and since these colo- 
nies were planted, under different forms, but always in the 
same substance of defiance of federal authority, secession 
has abounded, in every part of the country. Let me cul- 
tivate your feeling of charitable compromise by recalling 
to your recollection some of the facts. It was British 
arms, more than the articles of confederation, that kept us 
together during the war of the revolution, when the requi- 
sitions of Congress, so weak was its authority, the exigency 
being at its highest, were disobeyed by nearly every State 
of the thirteen.* The Federal Government was hardly or- 



New York and Pennsylvania are said to have been the two exceptions. 



40 

ganized, under the admimstratiou of Washington, when the 
New England delegations in Congress announced that, if 
the revolutionary debts of the States were not assumed 
by the Union, the N"ew England States would secede. The 
very term, secessionist, was, no great "while ago, it is to be 
believed, a favorite, for the American Anti-Slavery Society, 
at its annual meeting, in May, 1844, adopted a resolution 
" That secession from the present " XJn ited States is the 
duty of every Abolitionist."* 

With the jealousy of the States of their sover eiguty, of 
which it was neither wdse nor possible to divest them, the 
framers of the Constitution dealt as well as they could, but 
always gently. It was a jealousy, of w^hich Franklin 
complained, a century ago, which existed then, which 
went^^with us through the Revolution, and has adhered to 
us ever since. It was always, and is now, a necessary and 
honorable jealousy, arising from the love of freedom, and a 
just apprehension of power. But liberty has its excesses as 
well as despotism ; it is easy to persuade men, however 
free, that they ought to be freer ; and the office of in- 
flaming the States against Federal authority, has been, 
amid the heats of party, undertaken by, sometimes, the 
most enlightened statesmen, and often, the meanest dem- 



f!%i a patnplilet^publishcd in 1845, by, or at the office of the " American 
"Anti-Slavery Society," with an "introduction," by Mr. Wendell Phillips, 
dated Boston, loth January, 1845, which ends thus : " To continue this dis- 
" astrous alliance longer, is madness. The trial of fifty years, only proves 
" that it is impossible for free and slave States to unite on any terms, without 
" all becoming partners in the guilt, and responsible for the sin of slavery, 
"Why prolong the experiment? Let every honest man join in the outcry of 
<'the American Anti-Slavery Society, ' No union with slave-holders." 
Boston, Jan. 15, 1845. "Wendell Phillips." 

The resolution entire, of the Anti-Slavery Society, was as follows : 
" Resolved, That secesssion from the present United States Government, is 
" the duty of every Abolitionist, since no one can take office, or throw a vote 
" for another to hold office, under the United States Constitution, without vio- 
" lating his anti-slavery principles, and rendering himself an abettor of the 
"slaveholder in his sin." 



41 

agogiies. Patrick Henry in Virginia, Mr. Yates and 
Mr. Lansing in N'ew York, the distingnislied men in 
all parts of the conntry wlio opposed the Constitution, 
the leaders of the large minorities of the Massachu- 
setts and other conventions, which by majorities only, 
adopted it, the conventions of the States of Rhode Island 
and North Carolina, which, at fiist, wholly rejected it, 
mainly based their opposition upon the necessity of the 
States retaining their full power, as well as right, of sove- 
reignty. Patrick Henry, to the position taken in argument, 
in the Virginia Convention, that the States, by the terms 
of the compact, would have the right, if oppressed by the 
Federal Government, to secede from the Union, answered, 
True, ive will have the right, hut not the jpower. 

The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, from the time 
when they were penned by Mr. Madison and Mr, Jeiferson, 
and passed the Legislatures of those States in 1798 — 9, 
never ceased, in any part of the Union, to be the text of 
party, although from tlicir doctrine to that of Secession, 
there is but a single and inevitable step. The Virginia re- 
solutions declared it as the sense of that State " that, in case 
"of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other 
" powers not granted by the said compact, the States, who 
" are parties thereto, have the rigid and are in datij bound, to in- 
^^erpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintain- 
*'Hng within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liber- 
<' ties, appertaining to them.'" Those of Kentucky, that " each 
"State acceded as a State, and is an integral party; that 
" this government, created by this compact, was not made the pt- 
" elusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to 
^^ itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not 
"the Constitution, the measure of its powers, but that as in 
" all other cases of compact among parties havmg no common 
^' judge, each partg has an egual right to judge for itself, as well of 
" infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.'' And fur- 
ther, " That the several States who formed that instrument," 
5 



42 

the Constitution of the United States, "being sovereign 
" and independent, have the unquestionable right, to judge 
" of the infraction ; and, that a rmllification^ hy those sover- 
" eigniies, of all unauthorized ads, done under color of that in- 
^^strument, is the rightful remedy." 

These resolutions, to speak of the work of such men as 
Mr. Madison (who afterwards, in effect, recanted) and 
Mr. Jefferson, in the mildest and most charitable sense, 
were follies of the wise, for it is in the nature of govern- 
ment that the power of governing should be somewhere 
lodged, and to denounce the perils of permitting it to be 
exercised by the united discretion of all, and find for it no 
safer depository than the uncontrolled pleasure of one, was 
surely an impotent and unstatesmaulike conclusion. 

They were the early fruit of Democratic discontent. But 
in 1801 Mr. Adams and the Federalists went out, Mr. Jef- 
ferson and the Democrats came in, and the virtue of the 
followers of Mr. Hamilton and Mr, Jay was next to be 
tried, when in 1803 the purchase of Louisiana threatened 
to swamp Federal influence forever, by bringing into the 
Union and opening the great western country to a pioneer 
population. The right of State resistance became now 
'Ne\Y England doctrine, and was maintained by Puritanism 
with hereditary energy. As a specimen of its tone, take 
a speech in the House of Representatives, made the 14th 
of January, 1811, after the Louisiana question had been 
in fact settled for some years, and the subject long enough 
before the public to allow the first eftervesceuce of party to 
subside, by Mr. Quincj', of Massachusetts, a member repre- 
senting the city of Boston, and a gentleman of the highest 
standing, on the bill to admit Louisiana into the Union.* 
" I am compelled," said he, "to declare it as my deliberate 
" opinion, that if this bill passes, the bonds of the Union are vir- 
" tually dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from 



'* 6ales&Seaton's Annals of Congress, vol. 3, p. 525, 11th Congress, ISlO-ll- 



43 

" their moral obligations^ and that a,s il will be the right of all, au 
*' it will be the duty of some, to 2>fepare definitely for a separa- 
" tion — amicably if they can, violently if tliey must.'" 

But in June, 1812, when war was declared against Great 
Britain, and their militia was required by the Federal gov- 
ernment, by virtue of the clause of the Constitution author- 
izing Congress to provide for calling them out to " repel 
invasion," secession ripened fast in the cold climate of New 
England. Governor Strong, of Massachusetts, backed by 
a large majority of the legislature, proceeded under an opi- 
nion obtained by him from the highest Court of law of his 
State, to carry into action the dogma of the Virginia and 
Kentucky Resolutionp, and refusing to furnish the Massa- 
chusetts troops, he set Congress at defiance. He put to the 
court the following question, in an official communication 
to them, dated Boston, August 1, 1812 : 

"1. Whether the commanders-in-chief of the militia of 
"the several States have a right to determine whether any 
"of the exigencies contemplated by the Constitution of the 
" United States exist, so as to require thorn to place the militia, 
" or any part of it, in the service of the United States, at the 
"request of the President, to be commanded by him, pur- 
" suant to act of Congress." 

To this the Judges, who were Mr. Chief Justice Par- 
sons, a jurist of the highest standing, and a Federalist, as 
were doubtless his brethren, Mr. Justice Sewall and Mr. 
Justice Parker, of the straightest sect, officially answered 
thus : 

"It is the opinion of the undersigned, that this right is 
"vested in the commanders-in-chief of the militia of the 
" several States. The Federal Constitution provides that 
"when either of these exigencies exist, the militia may be 
" employed, pursuant to some act of Congress, in the ser- 
" vice of the United States ; but no j^oicer is given, either to the 
" President or to the Congress, to determine that either of the 
" said exigencies does in fact exist. As this power is not dele- 



44 

^^ gated to the United States by the Federal Constitution, nor pro- 
" hibited by it to the States, it is reserved to the States respect- 
" ively." 

Governor Strong accordingly refused to obey the call for 
troops, but in his resistance, which did not here end, of 
Federal power, he went on his dangerous way, not sup- 
ported by Massachusetts alone. Nothing but the peace of 
Ghent, signed in December, 1814, prevented that State, 
and perhaps others also, of the ISTew England States, from 
withdrawing themselves,* in some form, from the Union. 
Sanction was to be given to this step by a convention which 
was to meet at Boston at the recommendation of the famous 
Hartford Convention, where the preliminary movements to 
that object had been organized, but all of which, including 
the assembling of the Boston Convention, became unneces- 
sary, and fell through, when intelligence was received of 
the treaty of Ghent. 

The original convention was called, f and sat at Hartford, 
Connecticut, in December, 1814, composed of delegates ap- 
pointed by the constituted authorities of the States of Mas- 
sachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and of delegates 
" chosen by local conventions," in the States of ISTew Hamp- 
shire and Vermont, many of them men of the most emi- 
nent position, who after a session of three weeks, in which 
were fully considered the grievances of New England by 
reason of the war, agreed on, and transmitted to their 



* It is but justice to say that between the secession measures insisted on 
during the war, by Massachusetts, which was the South Carolina of that day, 
and those of other States which assembled at Hartford, and consented also to 
go into the second Convention, there were material differences as to the lengths 
they ought to go, and the Legislature of Vermont declined to send delegates 
to the Convention at all, while the Executive Council of New Hampshire re- 
fused to call the Legislature to appoint them. 

f History of the Hartford Convention, with a Review of the Policy of the 
United States Government, which led to the war of 1812, by Theodore Dwight 
Secretary of the Convention." New York and Boston : 1833. 



45 

several States, a series of resolutions, accompanied by a re- 
port, in wliich tbey hold tliis language : 

" That acts of Congress in violation of the Constitution are ab- 
" solutely void, is an undeniable ])osition. It does not, however, 
" consist with the respect and forbearance due from a con- 
'■^ federate State towards the general government, to fly to 
" open resistance upon every infraction of the Constitution. 
" The mode and the energy of the opposition should always 
■*' conform to the nature of the violation, the intention of 
" its authors, the extent of the injury inflicted, the detcrmi- 
" nation manifested to persist in it, and the danger of delay. 
" But in cases of deliberate, dangerous, and palpable infractions 
" of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of a State and 
" liberties of the people, it is not only the right, but the duty of 
" such a State to interpose its authority for their protection, in 
" the manner best calculated to secure that end. When emergen- 
" cies occur which are either beyond the reach of the judicial tri- 
" bunal, or too pressing to admit of the delay incident to their 
'■'■forms, States, which have no common umpire must be their own 
'■^judges, and execute their own decisions. It will be thus 
" proper for the several States to await the ultimate dis- 
" posal of the obnoxious measures recommended by the 
" Secretary of War or pending before Congress, and so use their 
" 'power according to the character these measures shall finally 
" assume, as effectually to protect their own sovereignty and the 
" rights and liberties of their citizens.'' 

Here was the doctrine acted upon by the seceding 
States in 1860 and 1861. Having pledged themselves to 
it, and to much more, the Convention, in adjourning, the 
5th of January, 1815, resolved, by one of their resolutions, 
which were numerous and, at this day, read most strangely, 
in case their grievances should not be in the meanwhile 
redressed, that it was " expedient for the Legislatures of 
" the several States to appoint delegates to another Con- 
" vention, to meet at Boston, in the State of Massachusetts 
" on the third Thursday of June next, with " such pow- 



46 

" ers and instructions as the exigency of a crisis so momen- 
" tons may require." Before that day the treaty with 
Great Britain was signed, and the States which met at 
Hartford, and such others as might have been represented 
in the hotter region of Boston,* lost forever the glory of 
anticipating the Secession of 1860. 

The 24th of November, 1832, piloted by Mr. Calhoun 
the State of South Carolina, by what they denominated a 
nullifying ordinance, which was the new name they gave to 
Secession, declared that "the several acts and parts of acts 
of the Congress, especially those of the 28th May, 1828, and 
14th July 1832, imposing duties on imports, were "unau- 
thorized by the Constitution of the United States, and 
violated the true meaning and intent thereof, and are null 
and void, and no law." 

When, in the session of Congress of 1836-7, the slavery 
agitation, which it was hoped had ended with the Missouri 
question of 1819-20, was resumed, never since to cease for 
a moment, it produced among its results, state acts, defying 



* The opinions, conduct and purposes of the Massachusetts leaders at that 
day have gone into history in every shape. Mr. John Quincy Adams, said of 
them in 1828, " That their object was, and had been for several years, a dis- 
" solution of the Union, and the establishment of a separate confederation, 
*' he knew from unequivocal evidence, although not provable in a court of 
'♦ law; and that in case of a civil war, the aid of Great Britain to effect that 
" purpose, would be as surely resorted to, as it would be indispensably neces- 
*' sary to the design." 

The peculiar spitefulness of the opposition to the Union prevalent in that 
part of the country, may be seen even better than in larger circumstances 
in an advertisement in the Boston Gazette, of the 14th April, 1814, of the 
Federal agent to receive subscriptions to the war loans, that the ' name of 
" any applicant shall, at his request, be known only to the subscriber.'" 

The feeling of 1814, it will be remembered too, broke out again when Texas 
came into the Union ; and exhibited itself according to the newspapers in 
resolutions of the Legislature of Massachusetts in the following words : — 

*' Resolved, That the annexation of Texas is, ipso facto, a dissolution of 
" the Union. 

"Resolved. That Texas being annexed, Massachusetts is outof the Union." 



47 

or seceding from a portion onlj', of the Federal Constitu- 
tion. The rejected portion was the provision for the restora- 
tion of fugitives from labor, which, bv the States enacting 
these laws, called Personal Liberty Bills, sometimes with 
open boldness, sometimes with evasive duplicit}', was set at 
naught. These statutes engendered in malice, and not like 
the I^ew England and South Carolina resistances of 1812 
and 1832, in a sense of supposed injury, by which so many 
States set aside the part of the Constitution of the United 
States which they did not choose to comply with, had 
immense operation in the region at which they were aimed, 
in bringing and reconciling men's minds to the movement 
of 1860-61. 

Massachusetts, in 1814, had not, by continuous action for 
a course of years, defied the laws of the Union ; Virginia 
and Kentucky, in 1798, had not approached, and South 
Carolina, in 1832, had not quite reached the point of action ; 
but here were resistance and defiance of Federal authority, 
violently, persistently, and, to all appearance, irrevocably 
adopted into state legislation; and depriving, from time to 
time, citizens of the United States of property of a peculiar 
and most clelica^.e kind, solemnly guaranteed to them by 
the Constitution. These enactments, repeated over the 
North, through the influence of the abolitionists, openly 
avowing their purpose to dissolve the Union, and of their 
party allies not only not joining in any desire to invade the 
peace of the country, but by a singular infatuation, to the 
last moment, refusing to believe it was in danger, were 
revolts against the Constitution in a more really dangerous 
form than any in which secession had yet appeared. They 
were more perilous than when secession took the form of 
opposition to revenue measures, or war, or to the alien and 
sedition laws, because aided by that irrepressible instinct of 
man's nature, which teaches him to love freedom and not 
slaver}^, they damaged, and were able to threaten the 
€ventual destruction of an interest, at the same time the 



48 

most vulnerable and the most wide spread, the very though^ 
of a general assault upon which was frightful to all con- 
cerned in it. They were part of a system of torture, un- 
relentingly applied for a quarter of a century, b}^ which the 
South were driven mad. The perplexity which haunted 
the owners of four millions of slaves, under the influence 
of incessant and ferocious anti-slavery agitation, from 1836 
to 1861, that increased in violence and enlarged in extent 
from one Presidential canvass to another, was at last, too 
much for them, and in 1861, appealing from New England 
fanaticism, to the New England doctrine of 1814, that 
" States which have no common umpire, must ])e their own 
"judges, and execute their own decisions," slavery flew to 
arms from the Rio Grande to the Potomac. 

The State that defies the Federal Constitution runs into 
revolution, and the reasoning that maintains it can do so 
constitutionally, is perverse ; and so is the reasoning which 
insists that to annul one provision, by making laws against 
restoring slaves, is less unconstitutional than to annul 
them all, by going out of the Union. But the counte- 
nance given it by the organized action of so many 
States was not lost on individuals, and tempted to 
demagoguism occasionali}^, statesmen — oftener, less noble 
politicians. Mr. Lincoln's doctrine laid down as lately as 
1848, as the rule of men's right to defy the government 
under which they live, is "inclination," and their power to 
carry it through. I quote from a speech made by him in 
the House of Representatives, the 12th January, 1848, on 
the former relations between Texas and the Mexican Union, 
of which it was once part. The speaker, who had voted 
that the war with Mexico was unnecessary and unconstitu- 
tional, is disputing a position taken, in the message of the 
President to Congress, touching the extent and limits of 
the Mexican territory. After saying that to ascertain the 
boundary between the two countries, it was necessary to 
know where jurisdiction was exercised, and asserting that 



49 

it had been fixed, not by treaty but revolution, he thus pro- 
ceeds : 

" Any people," said he, " anywhere, being inclined, and 
" having the jJoiver, have the right to rise up and shake off the 
" existing government, and form a nev) one that suits them better. 
" This is a most valuable, a most sacred right — a right 
"which, we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. 
" Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole peoj^le of 
*' a7i existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portions 
" of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their 
" own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than 
" this, a majority of any portion of such people may revo- 
" lutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, 
" or near about them, who may oppose their movements."* 

Here is secession in its cups : from all this to the Virginia 
and Kentucky resolutions, is the appeal from secession 
drunk to secession sober. The authors of those resolves, 
thinking with the rest of the world, that nothing but 
intolerable wrong can justify revolution, find the way 
through what they call an open door, but which was a 
breach in the Constitution, to revolutionary defiance of it. 
Mr. Lincoln deeming revolution virtue, "where being 
inclined and having the power," the promoters of it "can 
" shake ofiT the existing government and form a new one 
"that suits them better," disdains to mince into secession 
this "most valuable and most sacred right" of rebellion. 

And what does he mean, when, after telling us that this 
most valuable right is not confined in the exercise of it to 
" the whole people of an existing government," he goes on 
to say that " any portion of such people that can, may revo- 
" lutionize ;" and again, rising in the climax, " that more 
" than this, a majority of any portion of such people may 



* Congressional Globe, 1st session 30th Congress, Appendix, p. 94, where 
the debates appear, the speeches corrected by the members who deliver them. 
These remarks, therefore, of Mr. Lincoln, are from under his own hand. 

6 



50 

*' revolutionize ?" Does he mean that any fragment of a 
portion of a State may rebel and set up for itself; that in 
the ocean each drop is an ocean, and may declare itself an 
ocean, and have tides, tempests and sea monsters for itself? 
If they be " inclined and have the power," no part of the 
population can be too small to rebel ! ! ! 

It was the saying of the famous Carnot, a man of the 
first order, and an unquestionable democrat, — perhaps the 
truth lies between him and Mr. Lincoln, — after playing 
one of the busiest parts in the most efiective revolution the 
world ever saw, that in his judgment it was better to 
submit to the worst government, than attempt to pull it 
down. But the tendency is to the denial of authority, and 
politicians stimulate it by false doctrine. In 1798 Mr. 
Jefferson and Mr. Madison dipped their hands in this kind 
of mistake ; in 1848 Mr. Lincoln jumps into a horse-pond of 
it. Who would have believed who listened (if there were 
listeners) to such stuff as this in 1848, that in 1861 the 
speaker of it would be sending his messages to Congress as 
President of the United States, and marshalling armies 
against doctrines which are unintelligible enough, but, 
when compared with his own muddy principles, are purity 
itself? 

Ah ! well would it have been for the country had this 
subject of resistance to constitutional authority, been always 
dealt with as it was by Mr. Clay, in the debate on the 
Compromise bill of 1850, when, in reply to a Senator, who 
assumed to sustain a friend who had thus erred, he said, 
" I know him personally, and have some respect for him. 
" But if he pronounced the sentiment attributed to him, of 
" raising the standard of disunion, and of resistance to the 
" common government, whatever he has been, if he follows 
" up that declaration by corresponding ovei't acts, he will 
" be a traitor, and I hope he will meet the fate of a traitor !" 

But for schemes of resistance to authority, no brain too 
deep, none too shallow ; the stream of doctrine tolerating 



51 

the Union, but denying its power, everywlicre encouraged 
by political engineering, now soaking through the swamps 
of Carolina, now rushing over the rocks of New England, 
has swelled into the torrent of actual secession. We have 
nursed and petted what has grown to be a giant of mischief, 
and now, when he does his office, we can see nothing in it 
but " causeless and unnatural rebellion^' For exactly seventy 
years prior to the late Southern movement, this "causeless 
and unnatural rebellion " had rioted among us, in every 
part of the country, not only unpunished, but applauded 
and caressed, encouraged by the example of States, and 
countenanced by the precept of Mr. Lincoln! 

Secession is no new heresy in the United States ; and to 
the present hour, in the form of nullification, abounds in 
Northern statute books. Let Mr. Lincoln, whose lot is to 
make war on it, remember equal justice, and be ready wit?i 
terms of gentle peace. Let him take down from the colors 
of the Union his vile scroll of Unconditional Submission, and 
write there Conciliation and Compromise! And would it be 
asking too much of a magistrate whom we made and can 
unmake ; who was elected by voters and may be impeached 
by their representatives, to inform his constituents, the peo- 
ple of the United States, categorically and exactly, what 
are his terms of settlement ? Is it a new thing that a free 
people should know what they fight for ? 

Such are some of the reasons — of which the number could 
easily be swelled — why it would seem to be humauo, as 
well as wise and necessary, to come to an amicable adjust- 
ment, if possible, with the seceded States. But have the 
individuals who direct the present unhappy course of the 
policy of the country, reflected on the peculiarities of their 
own personal positions, when they thus push extreme mea- 
sures to their utmost limits ? 

The government at Washington are servants of a people 
who have but one desire left, all others beiug absorbed in 
it, and should they disappoint them, let them look to the 



52 

day of reckoning. Large majorities in the Houses of Con- 
gress unhesitatingly co-operate with them, and leave no 
shadow of irresponsibility, under which to take shelter. 
They have all the troops, all the money, all the legislation 
which the country can give. If the}'- make good their pro- 
mises ; if the war restore the Union, though coming to us 
with not a blade of grass, South or North ; if they possess 
us again of the territory of the United States, the mere 
area of land that belongs to us, we can begin again, and, 
profiting by our lesson, be what we had promised ourselves. 
But where will they be if they bear us to destruction? 

Should the wild and desperate game, now playing, of 
Union and Emancipation, give us no Union, and only 
Emancipation, they will do well to remember that revolu- 
tions, which Barrere said are not made with 'rose water, when 
they come to a bad end, usually find in the leaders of them 
the first victims of a deluded and exasperated people. And 
let the Republican party, of whom the immense majority 
are citizens of moderate and patriotic sentiments, trans- 
porting themselves "beyond the ignorant present," put 
their houses in order against the day when revolution, in 
rags, may march up to the doors of every one of us. It is 
infinitely more probable now that eighteen months hence 
we shall be paying the last penalty of civil discord, than 
eighteen months ago it was, that we should be where we 
are to-day. 

The people of the United States who have come to dis- 
aster under the delusion that, unlike the rest of mankind, 
they are immortal and invulnerable, in truth, have a qual- 
ity not possessed in the same degree by any other popula- 
tion, the sentiment of individuality, the sense of each man 
of his own importance. This is infinitely unlike the very 
restricted estimate placed on himself by the inhabitant of 
other countries, where high rank, hereditary power, and old 
establishments, meet, in every direction, his eye, and with 
the aid of a government which quite relieves him of the 



58 

cares of State, let down his pride far below the point at 
which is fixed that of the free and untrammelled citizen, 
who, standing in a new and vast country, where yet there 
are no monuments, looks round him and says, ilitre is nothing 
better than myself. This oug'ht to be an element of strength, 
though the converse exactly of the sentiment of the Roman 
citizen, that he and all he had were the City's. Whether it 
be nationally force or weakness, the people in the absolute- 
ness of their will, could they reach this question, which 
perplexes the present, and threatens their future, would 
seize and settle it; but between it and them stand two or- 
ganized governments. 

The objects of that of the South are undisguised ; it was 
ordained for separation; to that their chiefs pledged them- 
selves ; they are in arms for it ; to carry it through, and 
prevent the restoration of the Constitution and laws, they 
w^ould use all means, ill or good, foreign aliance, auxilliary 
troops, a return to European influence, if not dominion ; 
anything would be preferred to the Union ; such is the 
nature of their position. It would be impolitic to action 
the belief that the government at Eichmond would listen 
to any terms of agreement which the l^orth could, would, 
or ought to enter into. 

But are there any terms to which the Government at 
Washington would agree, which the South could, would, 
or ought to enter into ; to which any JSTortheru Republican, 
imagining himself for a moment a Southern citizen, would 
consent? To which any people in arms, having risen to 
" shake oiFthe existing Government, and form a new one 
"that suits them better," ever did consent? If the Gov- 
ernment could to-morrow, bring back every seceded State 
on the terms of the Crittenden resolutions, they would not 
do it. And if the Crittenden arrangement be unadvisa- 
ble, what other will they advise? There is none. And if 
there be none,, what is the ditference between the two Gov- 
ernments, on the head of opposition to the Union ? The 



54 

Southern victory at Bull Ruu strengthened the hands of 
Mr. Jeftbrson Davis, darkened the prospects of Union, and 
encouraged the hopes of European recognition. The 
Northern victory at Fort Donelson fortiiied the Abolition 
party in Congress, and enabling them to lay on the table 
of the House of Representatives Mr. Holman's resolution, 
that the war veas for the Union and the Constitution, served 
as so much anti-slavery artillery to batter them both. 

Our position is most critical, and demands all our ener- 
gies. That governments must occasionally stand between 
the people and their immediate inclinations, is true ; but it 
is also true — and the administration ought to reflect on it 
— that the day has gone by when the people were not con- 
sulted ; when York and Lancaster could divide and deluge 
the laud with blood, and count the people nothing ; that 
all they have they hold from us, and are to account for to 
us; and that we have no more stake in the game, playing 
between the abolition and secession factions as a game of 
dynasties, of ambition, of present power, and future Presi- 
dencies than if it lay between the White and Red Rose. 
We M^ant peace and union with the South, not the humili- 
ation of the South ; and the Government that uses us to 
seek for more, betrays us. 

Is there, then, the vital energy in the people of the United 
States to hold their own, and stand firm against not one, 
but two governments, that are bent on their ruin ; not to 
be crushed to death in the conflict of organized and oppo- 
sing forces, each ruling supreme in its section of country ; 
one insisting on unconditional submission, which is absurd, 
the other on perpetual separation which is ruin ; and both 
acting against the wishes of the people, and the Union of 
the States? Have we in the l^orth fortitude to wait, un- 
demoralized, for a Democratic House of Representatives, 
which cannot take their seats until December, 1863 ; as the 
passengers wait and cling to a shipwrecked vessel, and gaze 



55 

helplessly at sea and sky, tossed about b\' the tempest, so 
many days more ? 

Are we already demoralized ? The government is in the 
possession of the political abolitionists, who fain would 
perpetuate their power. They control tlie republicans, get 
along, as well as they can, with the abolitionists proper, 
and vspurn the democrats as- rebels. The state is deep in 
corruption, and we its citizens, exhaust our pockets, empty 
our veins, and peril our liberties in civil strife — which could 
have been ended a year ago, without raising a man or ex- 
pending a dollar — for the profit of political leaders, poli- 
ticians, who availing themselves of the passiveness of some, 
the thirst for office of others, and the fury of those of whom 
John Brown was no exaggerated type, have in craft and 
cold blood, through long years of treacherous agitation, 
brought us to this pass, with no better apology for it, than 
that they did not know what was coming ! 

They know it now ; they knew it during the session of 
1860-61. But the slaver}^ question has, alas ! its political 
mission — which is to make Presidents; and to settle it, 
would extinguish too m.any lights. The political Aboli- 
tionists will do nothing for us — will permit nothing to be 
done for us, and are as little to be trusted as the Abolition- 
ists themselves. If we are to be rehabilitated, it must be, 
under God, through our own energies. 

But if we submit our necks to the yoke ; if we yield to 
unconstitutional pressure, to a mock reign of would-be 
terror ; if, by a system of spying and seizing, violations of 
the person, violations of property, violations of the press, 
violations of papers and private correspondence, we are to 
be muzzled and hushed up ; if the voice that is raised for 
freedom and union is to be choked in men's throats ; in 
the N"orth by Mr. Lincoln, in the South by Mr. Davis; if, 
when our plainest word ought to be spoken in its loudest 
tone, some Jack-in-office is to command silence; if, at an 
hour when each citizen should be sentinel to the State, and 



56 

public judgment monitor to authority, we, whose blood and 
treasure support them, are to be kept under, like an Asiatic 
popuUition, by a feeble Government, at the head of a nu- 
merous army, why then, God help us ! 

If that Almighty and benelicent Being to whom some of 
our pulpits* pray for success in the shock of battle, that we 
may make deeper gashes in our brothers' bosoms than they 
can make in ours, that our swords may be sharper than 
theirs, our artillery more crushing, would vouchsafe more 
humble supplications, to enlighten the understanding and 
change the heart of Mr. Lincoln, it is not too late yet to 
restore peace and Union. But until Providence shall listen 
to such prayers let us make up our minds to the worst, 
and looking at things as they are, see in them this, that 
for measures having for their object the restoration of the Union, 
there could not be less chance than with the party now controlling 
the Federal government. 

Thus you have the views of the citizens of this midland 
reo-ion, wlio look to compromise with the South. It is the 
feeling of many of the Republicans, that an endeavor ought 
to be made to effect an amicable adjustment with the slave- 
holding States. That the Democratic party, which carried 
the State at the last election, and will sweep it at the next, 
will insist on an earnest and persistent efibrt, be it success- 



* Is it not the bounden duty of the clergy, a duty to God and man, to do 
something towards extinguishing the flames of civil war ? While there have 
been witnessed, within the year of our troubles, cases of ministers of religion 
who manifest the rancour of some of the New England pulpits of 1812, or 
those of England in 1650, they are, let us believe, rare instances, for the 
Christian Clergy comprise among them more virtue, learning and ability, 
than any other class. But much having been given them, much is expected 
of them ; and their function, surely, is to resist, and not to be sAvept away by 
the errors of those whom they watch and should control. How could they so 
well do their duty to their country and their sacred calling as by an united 
movement? " I call," said the magnificent Chatham, when the question was 
to put an end to civil war, " upon that Right Reverend Bench, those holy 
ministers of the Gospel, and pious pastors of our church ; I conjure them to 
join in the holy work, and vindicate the religion of their God !" 



57 

ful or unsuccessful, to restore the Uuion by measures of 
conciliation, you raa}^ be sure. 

After more than a year of hostilities, with all the political 
complications, forced upon us from so many sources, and 
which now fill the place of the once fraternal relations 
between the two parts of the country, it is true that recon- 
ciliation must be difficult; but it is not impossible. 

Men's passions may be high ; civil war may have stirred 
the depths of mutual hate, yet national fury cannot blot out 
the sense of individual interest and safety. Nations even 
in the midst of a career of foreign conquest, rejoice to return 
to peace. Whatever the present state of the public mind 
in the two sections of country now arrayed against each 
other, if the people of the North and South could meet in 
a field, they would settle their differences. They would 
listen to the war speeches, and then make peace. Had the 
South known that war was to follow, secession would not 
have been resorted to. Had the IsTorth known secession 
was to be the consequence, they would not have tolerated 
the slavery agitation. 

We are told that the South would not return to the 
Union ; — never would consent to come a^ain under the 
federal government — that the very children are inflamed 
with animosity against us ; — but the dltJieulty is with the 
North, not the South. 

The slave States, now out of the Union, seceded and 
betook themselves to arms, when they would have rejoiced 
to remain with us on terms which the mass of the Repub- 
lican party desired to offer, and which now ought to be 
freely tendered them. Why should they not return on the 
same terms, on which they would have remained ? 

That the feeling in the seceded States is extreme, may be 
admitted ; it is the natural and necessary consequence of 
the war, but it would be reasoning against the current of 
human motive to argue that the people of those States 
would rather suffer the ills which must accompany the 



58 

!N"orthern attempt to subdue them, than to come to a fair 
aod equal settlement. When did the weaker party — or any 
party — so act in national controversy ? We are to suppose 
the men in the South are like the rest of the world, and 
will follow their interests — will accept the advantages and 
blessings of peace, if they can be obtained at no greater 
price than that of digesting their anger. 

They have gone to war for what they think their rights, 
and separating from us is but the means, not the end. It 
is of hostilities, the declared, but not the only object. Nay, 
it was with the utmost reluctance that they admitted it 
within their line of objects at all. To give it the fullest 
prominence, it is but one of the purposes for which they 
fight. Now, peace may be honorable, and may be hailed 
and welcomed by all, though not carrying out the manifesto, 
which accompanied the declaration of war. 

We went to war in 1812 in defence of our neutral rights. 
We were to the last degree provoked, as well as injured, 
and our determination, solemnly declared, was to require 
the abandonment by Great Britain, of the claim to exercise 
the maritime violences so long practiced by her, at the 
expense of our comiuerce. The war ended in a treaty 
satisfactory to ourselves, and honorable in the eyes of the 
world, by which we passed over without any mention what- 
ever, all the objects for which we had been fighting by land 
and sea for between two and three years. The articles ot 
peace said not one word about them. 

The Government of the United States pledged them- 
selves, formally, to maintain our right to the territory of 
Oregon to the parallel of 54° 40' of north latitude. Was 
the treaty dishonor, by which, to avoid a war, we accepted 
less favorable terms? 

Washington — whose great name, like everything else that 
is American, must fall with the Union, and will comedown 
from that of the founder of an Empire to that of the author of 
an unsuccessful experiment — Washington himself, by the 



treaty of 1794, yielded, for tlie sake of peace, a point on 
which the heart of the country was fixed. 

The last march of European armies on the largest scale, 
was pointedly announced to have for its object the freedom 
of all Italy ; but the powerful people who undertook so 
large a task paused, after a successful and victorious com- 
mencement of the war, and declaring their programme had 
been too large, made peace, obtaining the freedom of but a 
small part of Italy. 

The South, too — it would be strange, indeed, were it 
otherwise — will make peace, if it be honorable and fair, 
not following their programme, and omitting disunion. 
The difliculty — I repeat — is not with the South, it is with 
the IsTorth. Doubtless there are other difficulties ; the two 
governments, the government at Washington and the gov- 
ernment at Richmond, with two entire national establish- 
ments, two debts, two armies, two navies, two allegiances, 
and all the infinite entanglements which have supervened 
since the session of Congress of 1860-1. But the main 
difficulty is with the i^orth — the North ruled by the Abo- 
litionists. While their dominion lasts, the difficulty is in- 
superable. 

But should the next Congressional election leave the Ad- 
ministration in a lean minority, the Democratic party — if 
(events do not in the mean time overwhelm tlie country* — 
will have it then in their power, and they will assuredly 
use it, to compel a change of measures; to require an ear- 
nest and sincere effort to bring about a settlement. Why 
should they not, out of their preponderance of votes, when 



* As the country may be overwhelmed hy the vices of a government con- 
ducted as is that of Mr. Lincoln, so may the Administration of it, and thus 
save the country. Why should not the accumulation of faults, and the enor- 
mity of their consequences, compel, at last, the President to tliat sort of sud- 
den and complete change of a ruinous policy, and of the persons who intlu- 
ence it, which has been often resorted to — but usually too late — in other parts 
of the world ? 



60 

opposed to the abolition party, in Missouri, Kentucky, 
Maryland, Western Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New 
Jersey, Indiana, Illinois, and California, with the aid of 
portions of the. States of I^ew York and Ohio, elect the ma- 
jority of the members of the next House of Representatives ? 
If they do, the back of abolitioii is broken, and the process 
of regeneration will be commenced. 

You tell me — native and resident, as you are, of a slave 
State — that you are in favor of the Union despite the worst 
measures of which the government is capable. I rejoice to 
hear it, and find in such sentiments firm ground on which 
to build my hope. If other citizens of your part of the 
country be as true and patriotic as yourself, it remains only 
that the ITorth do its duty at the polls to enable us to make 
our beginning, and break the fastenings which bind us to 
the fatal principles of the men now in power. When that 
shall be accomplished, we will apply ourselves to further 
effort; day will have begun to dawn, our hopes to assume 
form and shape ; the ship will be off the shore ; we can put 
sail on her and try the ocean. We will no longer be, as 
now we are, helpless. To support the government will no 
longer mean to stand mute when the Constitution is vio- 
lated and the Union undermined. 

To siijpport the government will mean that we support law- 
ful authority in lawful courses, and oppose it in all other. 
This war, in which we have been miserably involved — by 
the act of the South — by the faults of the North — we will 
support, as a war for the Union — which being assailed with 
the sword, must be maintained with the sword. We will 
carry it on, not with the power of arms alone, but essaying, 
also, the force of ample justice, and offers of frank concilia- 
tion. 



LBt^e'lO 



